Recent studies have highlighted the adverse impact of corruption on economic performance. This paper advances the hypothesis that corruption is largely a symptom of underlying weaknesses in public policies and institutions, a formulation that provides deeper insights into economic performance...

This paper examines the changing nature of growth spillovers between developed economies, the North, and developing countries, the South, driven by the process of globalization?the phenomenon of rising international trade and financial flows. We use a comprehensive database of macroeconomic and...

The paper looks at the hypothesis that financial market liberalization can create a basis for more stable exchange rates, as deviations of exchange rates from equilibrium levels bring forth stabilizing flows of liquidity. This "endogenous liquidity" hypothesis suggests that opening financial...

Many studies have attempted to uncover empirical regularities in how countries choose their exchange rate regimes. We survey previous studies showing that, taken as a whole, the literature is inconclusive. Drawing on a large dataset with many potential explanatory variables and a variety of...

The foreign exchange market microstructures in developing and transition economies are characterized by the results from the IMF's 2001 Survey on Foreign Exchange Market Organization. The survey found that these markets are usually unified onshore spot markets for U.S. dollars, where...

This paper provides a brief and selective overview of research on the links between macroeconomic policies and poverty reduction. Using the Human Development Index as a measure of well-being, the progress made by 100 countries during 1975–98 is presented, and its association with macroeconomic...

This paper reviews the experience of economic growth during the twentieth century with a view to highlighting implications for both growth economists and policy-makers. The unprecedented divergence in income levels between the OECD economies and many developing countries is documented but so too...

This paper analyzes the relationship between fiscal adjustment and real GDP growth in a panel of 26 transition economies during 1992-2001. Unlike most previous studies using cross-country regressions, the paper finds a positive and statistically significant relationship between fiscal adjustment...

This paper reviews the evolution of China's real effective exchange rate between 1980 and 2002, and uses a structural vector autoregression model to study the relative importance of different types of macroeconomic shocks for fluctuations in the real exchange rate. The structural decomposition...

This paper identifies factors that contribute to a fast recovery in growth after persistent negative terms of trade shocks, using a sample of 159 countries for 1970-2006. The results suggest that policies matter. Fast recoveries are fairly robustly related to real exchange rate depreciation and...