Cover -- Contents -- Abstract -- I. Introduction -- II. Defining Small States by population -- III. Lacking Economies of Scale -- A. Fixed costs spread over narrow base -- B. Scope for regional cooperation -- IV. Income per capita -- V. Scope for Import substitution through agriculture -- VI....

This paper seeks to document key characteristics of small island states in the Pacific. It restricts itself to a limited number of indicators which are macro-orientated - population, fertility of land, ability to tap into economies of scale, income, and geographic isolation. It leaves aside...

This study investigates the relationship between production efficiency in financial intermediation and financial system size. The study predicts and tests for the existence of ""systemic scale economies"" (SSEs), whereby value-maximizing intermediaries operating in large systems are expected to...

Emerging Europe has undergone a major economic transformation over the past 25 years. Most countries experienced initial drops in output during transition, followed by recovery in the second half of the 1990s. The path of transition in the Western Balkans has however been particularly uneven....

Using micro-data from household expenditure surveys, we document the evolution of consumption poverty in the United States over the last four decades. Employing a price index that appears appropriate for low income households, we show that poverty has not declined materially since the 1980s and...

We analyze the performance of kernel density methods applied to grouped data to estimate poverty (as applied in Sala-i-Martin, 2006, QJE). Using Monte Carlo simulations and household surveys, we find that the technique gives rise to biases in poverty estimates, the sign and magnitude of which...

This paper explores the hypothesis that the propensity to consume out of income is not constant but varies, perhaps in a nonlinear fashion, with fiscal variables. It examines whether there is any empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that households move from non-Ricardian to Ricardian...

This paper studies the volatility of consumption relative to output in the context of a simple general equilibrium model of a small open economy subject to exogenous shocks in productivity. With infinite horizons and exogenous relative prices, the model generates variance estimates that are well...

We undertake a quantitative analysis of the dispersion of current accounts in an open economy version of incomplete insurance model, incorporating important market frictions in trade and financial flows. Calibrated with conventional parameter values, the stochastic stationary equilibrium of the...