Efforts to liberalize world trade are increasingly focusing on strengthening the links between low-income countries’ trade policies and their development strategies. However, although greater trade openness promises faster growth for poor countries, it also presents risks to those with small...

Full text also available in: Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. The global economy is expanding moderately but the outlook has weakened further since October, and risks have increased. The global economy has been impaired from growth that has been too slow for too long, and...

The Global Informal Workforce is a fresh look at the informal economy around the world and its impact on the macroeconomy. The book covers interactions between the informal economy, labor and product markets, gender equality, fiscal institutions and outcomes, social protection, and financial...

This paper studies the impact of the level and volatility of the commodity terms of trade on economic growth, as well as on the three main growth channels: total factor productivity, physical capital accumulation, and human capital acquisition. We use the standard system GMM approach as well as...

Although the theoretical relationships are ambiguous, evidence suggestsa strong link between the choice of the exchange rate regime and economicperformance. The paper argues that adopting a pegged exchange rate canlead to lower inflation, but also to slower growth in productivity. Itfinds that...

Rodriguez and Rodrik (2000) argue that the relation between openness and growth is still an open question. One of the main problems in the assessment of the effect is the endogeneity of the relation. In order to address this issue, this paper applies the identification through heteroskedasticity...

In some countries, corrupt politicians appear to choose investment projects based on the opportunity for bribes and kickbacks these projectspresent. This paper contends that such corruption increases the numberof capital projects undertaken and trends to enlarge their size andcomplexity. The...

The global economy is at another highly uncertain moment: tentative signs of stabilization earlier this year have receded, and the outlook is increasingly risky and uncertain. At the same time, divisions within and across countries are deepening, exacerbated by rising fragmentation. Strong...

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix analyzes the relationship among prices, income, and money in Madagascar over the period 1982–2004. It finds that a stable long-run relationship for the price level exists, but that the adjustment toward this long-term equilibrium is...