Despite the growing support for market-oriented strategies, and for a greater role of private investment, empirical growth models for developing countries typically make no distinction between the private and public components of investment. This paper sheds some light on this important issue by...

This paper studies the relationship between banks' holdings of domestic sovereign securities and credit growth to the private sector in emerging market and developing economies. Higher banks' holdings of government debt are associated with a lower credit growth to the private sector and with a...

Many governments have initiated public employment programs or expanded the existing ones in response to high unemployment. However, in many middle-income countries, a relatively large government coexists with persistently high unemployment. This paper explores the question of whether public...

This paper provides empirical support for the view that enhanced economic security fosters private investment and growth in developing countries. An analysis for 53 developing countries suggests that most aspects of economic security have improved since the mid-1980s; that private investment is...

Tax or debt financing of a given rate of government expenditures would, according to the now well-known Ricardian Equivalence proposition, have equivalent effects on aggregate demand. Among the reasons for a deviation from the equivalence is the possibility that the government and the private...

Rising income inequality has emerged as a major policy issue facing policymakers, but there is a dearth of empirical work on inequality in small states, including the Caribbean. Despite data limitations, the empirical analysis using a sample of small states finds that increased openness and...

Global attention to ending child marriage and its socio-economic consequences is gaining momentum. Ending child marriage is not only critical from a development perspective but it also has important economic implications. This paper is the first to quantify the relationship between child...