Despite the surge in private capital flows in the 1990s, lending by the multilateral development banks continues to be a significant source of external finance for low-income and lower-middle-income countries. And for middle-income countries, which receive the lion's share of private flows,...

In recent years, various Latin American governments have resorted to taxes on bank debits and financial transactions as alternative ways of raising revenue. Considerable interest has developed in understanding the consequences of such reforms. The author constructs a dynamic general equilibrium...

A look at the data reveals that in OECD countries, economic fluctuations exhibit a high degree of synchronization. In 1965-90, cross-country contemporaneous GDP growth correlations averaged 45 percent. This suggests that a central element of any theory of economic fluctuations should be an...

In 1966, 90 percent of the cocoa growing areas in Bahia, Brazil had trees more than 30 years old. By 1985 most of the area had been replanted or supplied with new trees. Throughout most of this period there were high or rising cocoa prices, and zero or negative interest rates. High prices and...

Are natural resources a blessing or a curse? The authors present a model in which natural resources have a positive effect on the level of income and a negative effect on its growth rate. The positive and permanent effect on income implies a welfare gain. There is a growth effect stemming from a...

Dracunculiasis (or Guinea worm disease) was endemic in several African countries as well as in India, Pakistan, and Yemen. The past decade, however, has seen a remarkable decline in the incidence of dracunculiasis as a result of the Global Dracunculiasis Eradication Campaign. The authors compare...

Using a unique dataset comprising information for more than 900 firms in the machine building sector in Belarus, this paper investigates the determinants of firm growth for an economy where state ownership of enterprises is widespread. It uses panel data models based on generalizations of...

This paper analyzes firm growth patterns in South Asia, using establishment level data from an Interim Enterprise Survey. The survey was conducted by the World Bank in 2009 and 2010 and covers seven countries in the region. The first finding suggests that size in the base year gains importance...

Two sources of growth are firm learning and innovation. Using a unique panel data for 1,686 firms in six countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Turkey), this paper applies panel data estimatorsand Juhn-Murphy Pierce decomposition in order to identify the effects of the...

The troublesome debts of many developing countries have spawned much literature on why countries borrow, on what debt contributes to growth, on why countries repay, and on how to deal with existing debt. The author provides an analytical primer on the following aspects of sovereign debt : 1) the...