The role of interest rates in the development process has been studied exten· sively in recent years. Following upon the seminal work of McKinnon (1973), there have been a number of theoretical and empirical studies examining the relationship between financial development and economic growth,...

Movements in global capital during the late 1990s and the greater emphasis on price stability led many countries to abandon fixed exchange rate regimes and to design institutions and monetary policies to achieve credibility in the goal of lowering inflation. Such recent developments have brought...

There has been a sea change in the views of the economics profession as well as economic policy-makers over the past decade or so regarding the role of the government in the development process. Indeed, it is now becoming conventional wisdom that government can no longer be a dominant player in...

The surge of private capital flows to developing countries that occurred in the 1990s has been the most significant phenomenon of the decade for these countries. By the middle of the decade many developing countries in Asia and Latin America were awash with private foreign capital. In contrast...

This paper challenges the popular view that devaluation of the rupee is inflationary. Recent developments in the theoretical literature are reviewed to explain why consumer prices would be unresponsive to exchange rate changes in the short run. Then empirical tests are conducted for Pakistan...

Agriculture remains a dominant sector in the economies of most African and several Asian countries. However, the poor performance of agriculture in Africa stands in sharp contrast to the robust agricultural growth in many Asian countries.2 In this regard, the experience of China is perhaps as...

Deregulation, technology, and financial innovation are transforming banking. Indeed, banking is no longer the business it was even a few decades ago. The way banking services are provided has changed dramatically, and in many countries they are even offered by institutions that are quite...

Pakistan’s economy has grown faster on average than many other low- and middleincome countries over the past two decades. But several countries in Southeast Asia have fared even better. This paper focuses on factors that explain Pakistan’s relative growth performance. In addition to more...

This paper examines the factors that explain and help forecast inflation in Pakistan. A simple inflation model is specified that includes standard monetary variables (money supply, credit to the private sector), an activity variable, the interest and the exchange rates, as well as the wheat...