In Senegal, average annual real GDP growth has been more than 5 percent since 1995, with inflation well below 3 percent. Senegal’s economic performance has been broadly satisfactory in 2000 and during the first quarter of 2001. Yet, despite this economic performance, poverty is still...

This Selected Issues paper on Azerbaijan Republic reports that the government has made substantial progress in dealing with energy-related subsidies. The domestic market for oil products has been tightly regulated by the government since Azerbaijan gained independence. Azerbaijan is largely...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes Senegal’s real effective exchange rate (REER) and external competitiveness. A REER significantly above its equilibrium, as determined by economic fundamentals, can impede a country’s external competitiveness, calling for corrective macroeconomic measures....

This Selected Issues paper assesses the extent to which accounting for losses of pubic enterprises (PEs), fiscal risks of public-private partnerships (PPPs), and government support to private enterprises would change Senegal’s fiscal deficit. It analyzes SENELEC’s (electricity company)...

Inflation-forecast targeting is state of the art for monetary policy. This book explores first principles, including managing short-term policy trade-offs. The book also outlines efficient operational procedures and reviews the experiences of Canada, the Czech Republic, and India. The analysis...

The consumer price index (CPI) measures the rate at which the prices of consumer goods and services are changing over time. It is a key statistic for economic and social policymaking and has substantial and wide-ranging implications for governments, businesses, and households. This important and...

Based on cross-country data for up to 78 countries, this paper shows that fiscal decentralization-the assignment of expenditure and revenue mobilization functions to subnational levels of government-is associated with various indicators of governance, such as corruption, rule of law, and...

This paper studies the effects of demand and supply shocks in the global crude oil market on several measures of countries'' external balance, including the oil and non-oil trade balances, the current account, and changes in net foreign assets (NFA) during 1975-2004. We explicitly take a global...

This paper highlights key issues pertinent for the understanding of international effects of domestic tax policies and of international tax harmonization. The analytical framework adopts the saving-investment balance approach to the analysis of international economic interdependence focusing on...