The recent boom and bust in commodity prices has renewed the policymakers' interest in three complementary issues: i) characteristics and determinants of commodity price instability, ii) its macroeconomic effects and, iii) the optimal policy responses to this instability. This work falls within...

The recent boom and bust in commodity prices has renewed the policymakers' interest in three complementary issues: i) characteristics and determinants of commodity price instability, ii) its macroeconomic effects and, iii) the optimal policy responses to this instability. This work falls within...

The recent boom and bust in commodity prices has renewed the policymakers' interest in three complementary issues: i) characteristics and determinants of commodity price instability, ii) its macroeconomic effects and, iii) the optimal policy responses to this instability. This work falls within...

This article investigates the causes of the deflation which occurs in China since 1998. The analysis is based on a theoretical model which addresses supply shocks as well as demand shocks and on the estimation of a reduced equation of consumer prices variations for the period 1986-2002, the...

This paper establishes a link between deforestation and credit cycles in Latin American countries. The latter exhibit rapid deforestation rates as well as macroeconomic instability that is often rooted in credit booms and crunches episodes: data available on the last years show a coincidence...

Developing countries are being urged to extent public spending to reach The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Following a series of debt cancellations, the public debt of many developing countries has reached low levels, so that external borrowing is a plausible option. However, developing...

The impact of exchange policy on macroeconomic targets (growth, inflation…) is rather difficult to assess empirically. There is a lack of accurate quantitative tools to define the strategy used, then a dummy variable (fixed or floating rate) is generally used in econometric studies. This paper...

This paper focuses on the sources and consequences of the instability of tax revenue in Sub-Saharan African countries. We take advantage of a unique and extraordinarily rich dataset on the composition of tax revenues for a large number of countries. Using panel data for 39 countries observed...

This paper goes beyond traditional political budget cycles studies by considering the impact of the election calendar on the composition of tax revenue (direct taxes versus indirect taxes) rather than on the global level. We develop a theoretical model, based on Drazen and Eslava (2010) to...