The paper examines empirically the question of whether more unequal societies spend more on income redistribution than their more egalitarian counterparts. Theoretical arguments on this issue are inconclusive. The political economy literature suggests that redistributive spending is higher in...

Market reaction to a change in official interest rates will depend on the extent to which the change is anticipated, and on how it is interpreted as a signal of future policy. In this paper, a technique is developed to separate the anticipated and unanticipated components of such changes and is...

We examine the issue of technical assistance versus brain drain repatriation as alternative strategies for transferring scarce skills to a skill-poor economy. Technical assistance relies mainly on expatriate skills and labor from the host country, while brain drain repatriation seeks to effect a...

This paper analyses the impact of government tax and subsidy policy on immigration of human capital and the effect of such immigration on growth and incomes. In the context of a two-country endogenous growth model with heterogeneous agents and human capital accumulation, we argue that human...

This paper formulates a simple aggregate growth model that is capable of assessing the impact of macroeconomic policies on the long-term performance of a developing country. The model emphasizes expenditures on human capital and the dynamics of external debt, and yields empirically testable...

This paper reports on progress made on Nicaragua’s National Human Development Plan as of 2010. The operational goal for Nicaragua’s National Human Development Plan is economic growth with increased employment and reduced inequality and poverty. The results for 2007–10...

This report reviews the Priority Action Program (PAP) for Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) implementation in Burkina Faso. The PAP makes the PRSP operational and increases the visibility of public policies in the area of poverty reduction. The 2005–07 PAP is expected to help remove...