News - or foresight - about future economic fundamentals can create rational expectations equilibria with non-fundamental representations that pose substantial challenges to econometric efforts to recover the structural shocks to which economic agents react. Using tax policies as a leading...

This paper studies the spillover effects both within the bond markets for individual U.S. states and between the latter and the market for U.S. Treasury securities. We perform the Forbes and Rigobon (2002) spillover test using daily bond yield data over the period 2005 to 2011. Results are...

The paper proposes a framework for examining the process of financial market development. The framework, consistent with the functional view of financial system design, is anchored in studying the incentives facing the key players in financial markets-borrowers, lenders, liquidity providers, and...

Emerging European countries have made large strides in developing their local capital markets since the early-1990s. However, the rate of development has been widely disparate across countries and market segments, underpinned by the varying degrees of progress made in key areas such as...

This paper examines Sierra Leone’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Preparation Status Report. The government of Sierra Leone submitted its last PRSP preparation status report to the Executive Boards of the IMF and the World Bank in June 2003. However, the projected completion date...

This paper examines Congo’s Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP). Congo’s I-PRSP explains the features and causes of poverty in Congo. It provides a short- and medium-term vision of development as well as a strategic orientation for a return to sustainable and equitable growth....

The Gambian authorities produced two Annual Progress Reports (APRs) covering implementation of the first Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) during 2002–03 and 2004, respectively. This addendum is organized around four of the main themes of the first PRSP: (i) macroeconomic stability...

Liberia’s Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy (iPRS) sets out the emerging process and framework for recovery and reconstruction in the context of post-conflict Liberia. The iPRSP sets out the national socio-economic context, the preparatory process, dimensions of the emerging policy,...