The paper examines Senegal’s growth performance from the perspective of its povertyreducing and distributional characteristics, and discusses policies that might help make growth more inclusive. The main findings are that poverty has fallen in the last two decades, but poverty reduction has...

Most papers explaining the macro causes of the U.S. Great Recession focus on the behavior of the middle class: how its saving rate declined in the pre-crisis years, then surged following the crisis. This paper argues that the saving rate of the rich followed a similar pattern, the result of...

We develop a micro-founded general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents to identify pertinent constraints to financial inclusion. We evaluate quantitatively the policy impacts of relaxing each of these constraints separately, and in combination, on GDP and inequality. We focus on three...

This paper reviews the Joint Staff Assessment on the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper of Vietnam. It analyzes the progress in achieving the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS) goals and identifies the challenges. It assesses the macroeconomic performance, structural and...

This paper reviews economic developments in Lithuania during 1993–96. Economic growth resumed in 1994 and gained further momentum in 1995; real GDP increased by an estimated 3 percent in 1995. Growth in 1995 was driven by the industrial sector, while agriculture performed poorly. The...

The government’s strong monetary and fiscal policy framework, as well as the structural reforms introduced, have enabled the Canadian economy to respond flexibly to recent shocks and laid a solid foundation for recovery. Macroeconomic policies should remain supportive, with fiscal policy...

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix analyzes Ecuador’s fiscal policy using the concepts of the fiscal stance and fiscal impulse adjusted for movements in the real effective exchange rate. It finds that fiscal policy has been expansionary in 2000 and 2001. The paper shows...

This Selected Issues paper on Morocco analyzes Morocco’s growth performance over the past thirty-five years with a special focus on the more recent past. The paper presents stylized trends in growth; it first puts the overall growth performance of Morocco in an international perspective,...

This Joint Staff Advisory Note discusses key priorities for strengthening Uganda’s Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) and for ensuring its effective implementation. PEAP 2004 describes the participatory process underpinning the development of the PEAP strategy, provides a poverty...

This paper summarizes the macroeconomic performance of the transition economies. We first review the initial conditions confronting these economies, the reform strategy that was proposed, and the associated controversies that arose a decade ago. We then account for the widely different outcomes,...