This paper undertakes a cross-country analysis of productivity growth at both the aggregate and sectoral level. It finds that Asia's remarkable output growth over the past 40 years reflected both high investment, and rapid productivity increases. These factors were in turn supported by the...

This paper investigates the relationship between unrecorded economic activity associated with the production of illicit coca and formally recorded economic activity in Peru. It does so by attempting to construct new regional level estimates for coca production and by implementing recently...

Recoveries that occur in the absence of credit growth are often dubbed miracles and named after mythical creatures. Yet these are not rare animals, and are not always miracles. About one out of five recoveries is "creditless", and average growth during these episodes is about a third lower than...

The paper uses survey data to analyze whether financial market expectations on government budget deficits changed in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom during the period of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). Our findings indicate that accuracy of financial expert deficit forecasts...

Non-oil growth in the CFA oil exporting countries has been lackluster despite their great natural resource wealth. In this paper we study the key determinants of non-oil growth and explore to what extent these countries differ from countries with comparable levels of development that do not...

Can positive growth shocks from the faster-growing countries in Europe spill over to the slower growing countries, providing useful tailwinds to their recovery process? This study investigates the potential relevance of growth spillovers in the context of the crisis and the recovery process....

This paper estimates the impact of public capital on economic growth for forty-eight OECD and non-OECD countries during 1960 - 2001. Using the production function and its extensions, it finds a positive - but concave - elasticity of output with respect to public capital, which is robust to...

This paper employs several econometric techniques to estimate the Armenian output gap. The findings indicate that the output gap is significantly positive in 2007 and 2008 and decreased dramatically in 2009. The paper uses these results to estimate a New Keynesian Phillips curve for Armenia,...

The 2008 crisis underscored the interconnectedness of the international business cycle, with U.S. shocks leading to the largest global slowdown since the 1930s. We estimate spillover effects across major advanced country regions in a structural VAR (SVAR) using pre-crisis data. Our new method...

This paper focuses on post-crisis fiscal priorities in the ASEAN-5 economies - Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Sound economic fundamentals and timely and forceful policy responses to the crisis, including fiscal stimulus, contributed to rapid economic recovery in the...