Productivity growth has slowed in most Western countries, a reality well known in the economic literature, and the slowdown is likely to persist for some time. This paper investigates the impact of this phenomenon on export performance, with a particular focus on its heterogeneity across...

Developing Asia has exhibited rapid growth while saddled with relatively backward financial systems. One might conclude that the coexistence of sustained rapid growth and financial underdevelopment in developing Asia implies that an efficient financial sector is not indispensable for economic...

Using firm level data, the authors examine how global industrial concentration has changed over the last decade in relation to the rise of China. Between 2006 and 2014, global concentration has declined in most industries and is falling on average across all industries, while firms at the top of...

Latin American performance during the global financial crisis was unprecedented. Many developing and emerging countries successfully weathered the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Was it good luck? Was it good policies? In this paper we compare growth during the Asian and global...

This study suggests that Asian emerging-market economies now have financial sectors relatively unlikely to provoke new financial crises, either because of reforms after the late-1990s East Asian financial crisis or because of the dominance of state-owned banks not subject to bank runs. Financial...

Developing Asia has exhibited rapid growth while saddled with relatively backward financial systems. One might conclude that the coexistence of sustained rapid growth and financial underdevelopment in developing Asia implies that an efficient financial sector is not indispensable for economic...

The empirical literature on the relationship between democracy and growth has yielded conflicting results. Cross-country studies have failed to identify a significant impact of democracy on growth, while within-country studies have found a strong positive effect of the transition to democracy on...

This paper presents evidence from 29 postcommunist countries that the economic transition has been more successful than the political transformation in the quarter century since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The adoption of strong parliamentarian systems has countered the adverse effects of...

We explore two issues triggered by the global financial crisis. First, in most advanced countries, output remains far below the pre-recession trend, suggesting hysteresis. Second, while inflation has decreased, it has decreased less than anticipated, suggesting a breakdown of the relation...

The workhorse open-economy macro model suggests that capital inflows are contractionary because they appreciate the currency and reduce net exports. Emerging-market policymakers however believe that inflows lead to credit booms and rising output, and the evidence appears to go their way. To...