Structural adjustment, as measured by the number of adjustment loans from the IMF and World Bank, reduces the growth elasticity of poverty reduction. Growth does reduce poverty, but the author find no evidence for a direct effect of structural adjustment on growth. Instead, the poor benefit less...

The relation between growth, inequality and poverty is the central theme of the paper. While the fast economic growth under the neo-liberal policy regime helps reduce poverty, it increases inequality in income distribution in a way that retards the progress in poverty-reduction. The empirical...

When analyzing the appropriate response for monetary policy during a currency crisis it is important to keep in mind two distinct channels: (a) the impact of raising interest rates on exchange rates; and (b) the direct impact of exchange rate changes on output. The first pertains to the monetary...

For many decades, macro-policy in India was conducted in an environment with five key elements: Agricultural shocks rather than a conventional business cycle; A closed economy; deeply distortionary tax policy coupled with a fiscal crisis; financial markets that lacked speculative price discovery,...

The purpose of this study was to explore the role and importance of human resources for the scaling up of health services in low income countries. In the case studies, the following have been analyzed: (i) investigated the size, composition and structure of the current health work force; (ii)...

Report of the Expert Group

The increase in direct taxes has not been able to offset the decline that resulted from the reduction in customs tariff and decline in excise revenue. The task facing the policymakers now is to explore ways in which the tax ratio can be pushed up without going back on the basic elements of the...

The robust performance of the Indian economy continued during the second quarter (July-September) of 2005-06. According to the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO), the economy recorded a real GDP growth of 8.0 per cent in the second quarter of 2005-06 maintaining the momentum of growth in the...

There has been a very rapid rise since the early 1990s in foreign reserves held by developing countries. These reserves have climbed to almost 30 percent of developing countries' GDP and 8 months of imports. Assuming reasonable spreads between the yield on reserve assets and the cost of foreign...