Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain entered a period of severe economic and financial stress in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Their collective experience confirmed the primacy of total debt, private or public, in affecting the onset of, depth of, and recovery from economic crises. The year...

Policy makers and regulators have devoted much effort to reforms aimed at improving financial stability in response to lessons from the 2007-09 crisis. At the same time, much effort has also been directed to promoting greater financial inclusion as an enabler of equal opportunity. To some...

Using a new, large data set on quarterly reserve requirements for the period 1970-2011, this paper provides new evidence on the use of reserve requirements as a countercyclical macroprudential tool in developing countries. The appeal of reserve requirements lies in the pro-cyclical behavior of...

The fast spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has resulted in the emergence of several hot-spots around the world. Several of these are located in areas associated with high levels of air pollution. This study investigates the relationship between exposure to particulate...

This paper looks at the structural marginalization of ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities in six pilot economies (Bulgaria, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Tanzania, and Vietnam) and proposes a new methodology for collecting cross-country comparable data on antidiscrimination legal...

This paper reviews international practices for ?bottom-up costing? for medium-term expenditure frameworks. Medium-term expenditure frameworks are important because they incorporate the multi-annual nature of the fiscal policy into the budget process, mitigating its short-term bias. They also...

This paper shows how Dutch disease effects may arise solely from a shift in demand following a natural resource discovery. The natural resource wealth increases the demand for non-tradable luxury services due to non-homothetic preferences. Labor that could be used to develop other non-resource...

One of the key features of the Dutch education system is freedom of education -- freedom to establish schools and organize teaching. Almost 70 percent of schools in the Netherlands are administered by private school boards, and all schools are government funded equally. This allows school...

Bangladesh has achieved robust economic growth over the past 10 years, with real GDP growing by more than 6 percent on average each year. This paper investigates whether the country will be able to maintain such high levels of growth going forward. A simple growth model calibrated to the...

This paper uses data from the National Financial Inclusion Survey 2018 to understand the determinants of financial inclusion in Sri Lanka and their significance for inclusive growth. The findings highlight that gender, education, and formal employment are important determinants of financial...