The ambition of this paper is to analyse real exchange rate dynamics in Macedonia relying on a highly disaggregated dataset. We complement the indirect evidence reported in Loko and Tuladhar (2005) and we provide direct evidence on the irrelevance of the Balassa-Samuelson effect for overall...

This paper describes the construction of a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Bolivia for the year 1997. Three distinctive features render the SAM a useful starting point for distributional analyses. First, production in the agricultural and services sector is split up into formal and informal...

This paper analyzes how major external shocks and policy reforms affect Bolivia’s ability to achieve pro-poor growth. Employing a recursive-dynamic CGE model, it considers three different scenarios: an optimistic baseline scenario that roughly extrapolates the situation prevailing before the...

This paper addresses the question of whether the Bolivian gas boom of the 1990s has bypassed large parts of the poor population, thereby leading to increasing inequalities in an already unequal society. Using a Computable General Equilibrium model that is sequentially linked to a microsimulation...

This paper discusses alternative adjustment patterns in Bolivia over the last three decades using a SAM-based model that explicitly separates formal from informal activities, includes separate accumulation balance adjustments for different economic agents, differentiates closures by periods of...

Bolivia's mid-term growth prospects are promising but these prospects could be lost, due to social unrest and political instability, if the country does not solve its short-term economic problems, resulting from both external shocks and internal factors. Against this background, this paper...

Unlike in Asia, the manufacturing sector has not (yet) become a driver of structural change in Africa. One common explanation is that the natural resource-focus of many African economies leads to Dutch disease effects. To test this argument for the case of newly found oil in Ghana we develop a...

Political proximity between donor and recipient governments may impair the effectiveness of aid by encouraging favoritism. By contrast, political misalignment between donor and recipient governments may render aid less effective by adding to transaction costs and giving rise to incentive...

We analyze the aid portfolio of various bilateral and multilateral donors, testing whether they have prioritised aid in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In doing so, we combine sectorally disaggregated aid data with indicators reflecting the situation of recipient countries...

We find a U-shaped relation between happiness and religiosity in cross-country panel data after controlling for income levels. At a given level of income, the same level of happiness can be reached with high and low levels of religiosity, but not with intermediate levels. A rise in income causes...