The paper focuses on the impact of diversification on bank performance and how consolidation through mergers and acquisitions (M and A) affects the banking sector's stability in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU). The paper finds that a lower level of loan portfolio diversification...

Healthcare in the United States is the most expensive in the world, with real per capita spending growth averaging 4 percent since 1980. This paper examines the role of market power of U.S. healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies. It finds that markups (the ability to charge prices...

In the context of the U.K. government’s EMU entry condition of cyclical convergence, this paper (i) provides further evidence suggesting that historically the U.K.’s business cycle has been more volatile than, and relatively independent of, the cycles in the euro-area countries; and (ii)...

This paper analyses the process of disintermediation, the progress in consolidation, the impact of new technologies, and the role of ownership and control structures for the euro area banking sector. The impact of these trends on competition policy, ""too big to fail"" concerns, and financial...

This paper reviews forestry reform in the Congo basin, focusing on Gabon. It argues that the key challenge for the Congo basin countries is to manage their forests in a sustainable manner. It presents the current situation of forestry taxation and forestry reform in Gabon. The paper analyzes...

This paper examines the role and impact of taxation on sustainable forest management. It is shown that fiscal instruments neither reinforce nor substitute for traditional regulatory approaches. Far from encouraging more sustainable forest management, fiscal instruments such as an inappropriate...

Countries generally tax the forestry sector to achieve the twin objectives of revenue maximization and sustainability of logging levels. In an ideal world of perfect markets and information, auctions would be the best instrument to determine the price of extraction rights. However, a number of...

We show empirical evidence that there may not be a tradeoff between market income inequality and high sustained growth, which is key for poverty alleviation. We argue that the economies that achieved high sustained growth and low market income inequality are characterized by dynamism-a drive...

We show that firms' market power dampens the response of their output to monetary policy shocks, using firm-level data for the United States and a large cross-country firm-level dataset for 14 advanced economies. The estimated impact of a firm's markup on its response to a monetary policy shock...