With China's accession to the WTO in 2001, Russia is by far that organization's most prominent nonmember. This paper applies the gravity model to gauge whether this "outsider" status has been affecting Russia's export structure. On the basis of cross-section and panel regressions for 1995-2002,...

This paper analyzes developments in the structure of trade in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) during the transition decade, and finds that it changed less than in other transition economies. Trade openness of the CIS increased between 1993 and 1997, but has fallen to a lower-level...

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is faced with the task of stabilizing and reviving a devastated economy after years of military conflicts, sanctions, and economic mismanagement. A weakened institutional capacity and the still evolving political situation is a cause for concern. A short-term...

We revisit the question of the quantitative benefits of WTO trade agreements in a setup that is non-standard from the traditional trade policy point of view. We show that in a New Keynesian model, unilateral trade liberalization reduces welfare due to terms-of-trade deterioration, creating an...

We examine the composition and drivers of cross-border bank lending between 1995 and 2012, distinguishing between syndicated and non-syndicated loans. We show that on-balance sheet syndicated loan exposures account for almost one third of total cross-border loan exposures during this period....

We use a cross-country panel framework to analyze the effect of net official flows (chiefly foreign exchange intervention) on current accounts. We find that net official flows have a large but plausible effect on current account balances. The estimated effects are larger with instrumental...

Like most Sub-Saharan African countries, Kenya’s economic growth appears to have been primarily driven by factor accumulation. The Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix for Kenya examines economic developments and policies. During the last two decades, Kenya has been plagued by...

This Report on the Observance of Standards and Codes—Data Module provides an assessment of Israel’s macroeconomic statistics against the Special Data Dissemination Standard complemented by an assessment of data quality based on the IMF’s Data Quality Assessment Framework,...

In recent years there has been substantial theoretical and empirical work on the role that financial markets play in fostering economic growth and development. This paper provides a selective review of the literature, as well as new empirical evidence on the relationship between financial...