This paper examines the external sustainability and competitiveness of Benin’s economy. Balance of payments flows suggest Benin’s external position is sustainable. Large trade and current account deficits are comfortably financed by inflows through the capital and financial...

This Selected Issues Paper and Statistical Appendix for Niger are discussed. The Nigerien economic outlook has been improving since 1999. After a long period of decline in per capita income, growth accelerated through 2007, attaining an annual average of 4 percent, or about 1 percent in per...

We show the importance of a dynamic aggregation bias in accounting for the PPP puzzle. We prove that established time-series and panel methods substantially exaggerate the persistence of real exchange rates because of heterogeneity in the dynamics of disaggregated relative prices. When...

This Selected Issues paper on the Republic of Kazakhstan underlies growth of the non-oil sector, fiscal management of oil wealth, and bank credit growth. The share of tradables in the non-oil sector has declined significantly, both in terms of value added and employment, while many nontradable...

We re-examine the monetary approach to the exchange rate from a number of perspectives, using monthly data on the deutschemark-dollar exchange rate. Using the Campbell-Shiller technique for testing present value models, we reject the restrictions imposed upon the data by the forward-looking...

The paper examines the principles on which a reform of a Quota based global economic institution like the IMF must be based, taking account of both the relative economic power of countries and the need for voice and representation of the poor countries. These principles are then used in the...

The IMF’s main uses of the International Comparison Program’s (ICP) estimates of purchasing power parity (PPP)-adjusted Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are as an element of the formula used to help guide decisions on its members’ quotas and in the World Economic Outlook (WEO)....

This paper provides an exchange rate assessment for sub-Saharan African economies by using methodologies similar to those developed by the International Monetary Fund’s Consultative Group on Exchange Rate Issues. As in the World Economic Outlook (IMF, 2009a), the unbalanced panel dataset...