In an interconnected world, national economic policies regularly lead to large international spillover effects, which frequently trigger calls for international policy cooperation. However, the premise of successful cooperation is that there is a Pareto inefficiency, id est if there is scope to...

This paper considers the consequences of international financial market integration for national fiscal and monetary policies that derive from the absence of an international sovereign authority to define and enforce contractual obligations across borders. The sovereign immunity of national...

In this paper, we analyze how lack of credibility and transparency of monetary and fiscal policies undermines the effectiveness of macroeconomic policies to isolate the economy from commodity price fluctuations. We develop a general equilibrium model for a commodity-exporting economy where macro...

Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as 'hysteresis,' argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and...

This paper identifies and documents the properties of output gap recessions and recoveries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan (MENAP) during the 1980 to 2008 period. It goes on to investigate the key determinants of the recoveries. The duration of MENAP countries’ recessions and...