Nepal's trade balance in goods and services has been in deficit for many years. The large deficit has not resulted in a substantial accumulation of net foreign liabilities, as it has been largely financed with workers' remittances from abroad. Indeed, remittances are the largest component of the...

This paper examines the determinants of corporate savings in a cross-country panel setting. Specifically, it employs firm-level data covering more than 540,000 firm-year observations for 12 advanced and emerging market economies. Panel regression results suggest that reductions in statutory...

Latin America's historically low saving rates and sub-par growth performance raise the question of whether the region should save more to grow faster. Economists generally resist acknowledging a policy-exploitable causal connection going from saving to growth because domestic saving is perceived...

This paper presents an analysis of the effect of remittances on the current account in developing and emerging economies, incorporating an assessment of the extent to which exchange rate regimes impact the relationship. The main findings suggest there is a positive effect of remittances on the...

What sorts of conditions make some countries more prone to corruption than the others? This is an important question for understanding how corruption arises and how to combat it. The present paper attempts to answer this question by exploring the link between the size of the country and...

Open data and open government data have recently attracted much attention as a means to innovate, add value, and improve outcomes in a variety of sectors, public and private. Although some of the benefits of open data initiatives have been assessed in the past, particularly their economic and...

This paper examines the role of monetary policy in fossil fuel exporters at different horizons. The main argument is that central banks in these economies need to look beyond the horizon of the business cycle. In the short run, (independent) monetary policy should flexibly target inflation. In...