This paper reviews the Latin American experience with the implementation of 1993 SNAand the updating of the national accounts' base year. It also makes a preliminary assessment of the possible estimation biases in nominal GDP estimates stemming from the use of outdated national accounts base...

This paper shows that aggregate investment expenditure shares on tradable and nontradable goods are very similar across countries and regions. Furthermore, the two expenditure shares have remained close to constant over time, with the average expenditure share on nontradables varying between...

Over the last decade, a number of methodological manuals on macroeconomic datasets were produced by the international community. For a number of reasons, these manuals could be viewed as fragmented, disconnected, and branching in various directions. This paper groups by topics and broad...

A key challenge in government budgeting is to define an appropriate balance between current and capital expenditures. Budgeting for government capital investment also remains not well-integrated into the formal budget preparation process in many countries. This paper aims to provide an overview...

This paper provides detailed empirical evidence on the saving behavior of Irish households using micro data from the 1994/95 and 1999/2000 Household Budget Surveys. I employ synthetic cohort techniques to characterize the life cycle profile of saving rates and to examine the response of...

The principles underlying the recording of changes in inventories are explained in the System of National Accounts, 1993 (1993 SNA), but operational guidelines on their measurement are lacking. This paper elaborates specific statistical techniques and their underlying assumptions for calculating...

Myanmar's multiple exchange rate system creates various economic distortions. This paper describes the exchange rate practices in Myanmar, develops a model of foreign exchange markets, and presents the efficiency costs imposed by quasi-fiscal operation under the current exchange rate regime. The...

Developing and transition economies are prone to financial crises, including balance of payments and banking crises. These crises affect poverty and the distribution of income through a variety of channels: slowdowns in economic activity, relative price changes, and fiscal retrenchment, among...

The global crisis of 2008 highlighted the need to understand financial interconnectedness among the various sectors of an economy and between them and their counterparties in the rest of the world. However, application of this kind of analysis has been hampered by the lack of adequate data. This...

Current estimates of global poverty vary substantially across studies. In this paper we undertake a novel sensitivity analysis to highlight the importance of methodological choices in estimating global poverty. We measure global poverty using different data sources, parametric and nonparametric...