Although Afghanistan has made significant gains over the years, vulnerabilities remain. The economic program Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS) has been developed to sustain democracy, reduce poverty, and improve growth. ANDS, an important milestone in the rebuilding and...

A major element of the persistent fiscal imbalances in Guinea-Bissau is the relatively low level of revenue compared with other sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Fiscal revenues, including grants, trended downward significantly in Guinea-Bissau from 1991 through 2005, especially during the...

Multilateral Consultations are a new tool of multilateral surveillance for the IMF, designed to foster action-oriented debate and policy actions on a problem of systemic or regional importance. The first multilateral consultation focused on facilitating the resolution of global imbalances while...

There is a widespread view that the adjustment of U.S. trade prices--and hence merchandise trade flows--in the face of the substantial dollar depreciation since early 1985 has been slower than might have been expected. This paper examines the recent behavior of U.S. trade prices, and concludes...

The U.S. economy is recovering from a financial crisis, but remains vulnerable to shocks. Executive Directors welcomed health care reform, fiscal stabilization, and the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) assessment, which acknowledged that the financial system has strengthened. Directors...

This paper examines the behavior of business fixed investment in the United States in the 1980s. A background discussion of the long-term behavior of the components of business fixed investment is provided, setting the context for the empirical analysis. A standard neoclassical model of business...