The objective of this paper is to analyze the growth performance of the ECCU countries since independence and the policy challenges they face to ensure sustained growth in the period ahead. Although tourism specialization may bring about higher growth, it could also increase volatility in growth...

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...

The countries of the Middle East and North Africa, and the Caucasus and Central Asia have the highest output volatility in the world. Fiscal policy is a powerful tool that can help dampen the business cycles. This paper analyzes the cyclical properties of fiscal policy in the region during the...

This paper focuses on the private nonfinancial sectors of the affected economies, financial liberalization provided households and businesses with greater access to credit markets. This contributed to the long period of expansion during the 1980s. Partly as a result of major changes to the...

The economic and financial crisis that erupted in southeast Asia in July 1997 had continued to deepen and broaden as of December, and spillover effects from investor' deteriorating confidence in emerging market economies were being felt throughout the global financial system. This special...

These studies, prepared by the staff of the International Monetary Fund, comprise supporting material for the analyses and scenarios in the World Economic Outlook and provide a more detailed examination of the theory and evidence on some major issues affecting the global economy, commodity...

This paper assesses the evolution of Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) real exchange rates over time, and examines whether the region has lost competitiveness. The main finding is that there is little evidence of overvaluation of the Eastern Caribbean (EC) dollar. The relationship...

This Selected Issues paper on the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) underlies key features of business cycles. To obtain new measures of classical and growth cycles, simple rules were applied to date turning points in the classical business cycle, and a recently developed frequency domain...