Capital flows can deliver substantial benefits for countries, but also have the potential to contribute to a buildup of systemic financial risk. Benefits, such as enhanced investment and consumption smoothing, tend to be greater for countries whose financial and institutional development enables...

Investigates the macroeconomic challenges for low-income countries created by a surge in aid inflows. It develops an analytical framework for examining possible policy responses to increased aid, and then applies this framework to the experience of five relatively well-governed countries that...

This paper provides background to the Board paper on Macro Policy Lessons for a Sound Design of Fiscal Decentralization. It summarizes the findings and recommendations of the Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD) for ten countries to which it provided advice on fiscal decentralization. The selected...

This paper addresses three questions about unconventional monetary policies. First, what policies were tried, and with what objectives? Second, were policies effective? And third, what role might these policies continue to play in the future?

Fiscal decentralization has been, and remains high on the policy agenda of many countries. It is mainly driven by political pressures, which tend to be especially evident in countries with multiple ethnicities, and/or wide regional disparities in incomes or resource endowments. More generally,...