Cotton production is truly a success story in West and Central Africa. The region is now the second largest exporter of lint, after the United States, with a world market share of 15 percent. Despite its strong performance in the past, the sector is characterized by several institutional and...

Backed by rapid economic growth, growing financial clout, and a newfound sense of assertiveness in recent years, the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - are a driving force behind an incipient transformation of the world economy away from a US-dominated system toward a multipolar...

The current financial crisis has highlighted the danger that declines in confidence can have a self-fulfilling effect on economic activity. In this paper, the authors consider ways of measuring investor and consumer confidence, and try to explain the evolution of confidence using measures of...

This paper presents model simulations to quantify the effects of different stabilization packages in the distribution of income and wealth. The simulations suggest that a sharply contractionary stabilization package has a major adverse impact on the distribution of income. The shifts in...