We analyze the growth impact of official development assistance to developing countries. Our approach is different from that of previous studies in two major ways. First, we disentangle the effects of two kinds of aid: developmental and non-developmental. Second, our specifications allow for the...

This paper assesses the macroeconomic implications of scaling up aid for Benin in line with the Gleneagles commitment to double aid to poor countries over the next three years to reach 85 per capita by 2010 and keep it at that level thereafter. The analysis suggests that the additional aid...

This paper uses a partial equilibrium framework to evaluate the relative efficiency, distributional and revenue implications of rice tariffs and targeted transfers in Madagascar, especially in the context of identifying their respective roles for poverty alleviation. Although there are likely to...

This paper studies the spending and absorption of aid in PRGF-supported programs, verifies whether the use aid is programmed to be smoothed over time, and analyzes how considerations about macroeconomic stability influence the programmed use of aid. It finds that PRGF-supported programs allow...

We develop a simple macroeconomic model that assesses the effects of higher foreign aid on output growth and other macroeconomic variables, including the real exchange rate. The model is easily tractable and requires estimation of only a few basic parameters. It takes into account the impact of...

This paper explores the catalytic impact of IMF lending to Low-Income Countries on Official Development Assistance (ODA) during 1990-2019. It disentangles the effect on the amounts of ODA on countries’ participation in IMF programs (“extensive margin”) and the size of the IMF-supported...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. RELATED LITERATURE -- III. THE MODEL -- IV. CROSS- COUNTRY INCOME DIFFERENCES -- V. POLICY EXPERIMENTS -- VI. THE AID COST OF REFORM -- VII. AID FAILURES -- VIII. CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- A. Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Closed Economy -- B. Optimal...

In developing economies, a shift to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic varies substantially. An increase in teleworking days per week ranges from 0.7 to 17.6 percentage points across 10 developing countries covered by an online survey to about 500 respondents per country. An...

We construct a high-frequency dataset that combines information on all IMF lending and proxies of monthly economic activity during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-21). Using this novel dataset and standard econometric techniques we find a positive and significant marginal...

Inflation in low-income countries is often high and volatile, driven by external shocks. In addition, inflation in fragile states is affected by highly volatile domestic factors that complicate monetary policy's ability to deliver price stability. We estimate the drivers of inflation in Guinea...