This paper examines issues raised by the evolution of a rapidly growing small open economy—Singapore—from a labor-intensive, low-technology production base to a capital-intensive, high-technology, knowledge-and-skill-intensive emphasis as it approached the limits of its resource constraints...

As central banks across the globe have responded to the COVID-19 shock by rounds of extensive monetary loosening, concerns about their inequality impact have grown. But rising inequality has multiple causes and its relationship with monetary policy is complex. This paper highlights the channels...

The paper uses both macro- and micro-level data to assess how has the financial health of the Irish non-financial corporate (NFC) sector changed in the post financial crisis period. The analysis suggests that vulnerabilities have generally declined in recent years, but the NFC sector and...

The US economy is often referred to as the "banker to the world," due to its unique role in supplying global reserve assets and funding foreign risky investment. This paper develops a general equilibrium model to analyze and quantify the contribution of this role to rising wealth concentration...

Major epidemics of the last two decades (SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola and Zika) have been followed by increases in inequality (Furceri, Loungani, Ostry and Pizzuto, 2020). In this paper, we show that the extent of fiscal consolidation in the years following the onset of these pandemics has played an...

This paper discusses the main challenges faced by resource-rich nations in promoting equity; describes policy tools available for managing exhaustible natural resources; and analyzes the relationship between resource wealth and state fragility. It is argued that human capital accumulation,...

This paper explores the interaction between corporate ownership concentration and private savings, and by extension, the current account balance in Germany. As high corporate savings largely reflected capital income accruing to wealthy households and increasingly retained in closely-held firms,...

We analyze the US public sector balance sheet and project it forward under the assumption that current policies remain in place. We first document the history of the balance sheet and its components since World War II, with a detailed account of its evolution during and after the global...