In the past few years, a number of central banks have adopted inflation targeting for monetary policy. The author provides an introduction to inflation targeting, with an emphasis on analytical issues, and the recent experience of middle- and high-income developing countries (which have...

The author provides a selective review of the recent analytical and empirical literature on the benefits and costs of international financial integration. He discusses the impact of financial openness on consumption, investment, and growth, and the impact of foreign bank entry on the domestic...

The author examines the potential trade-offs that may arise between poverty alleviation and unemployment reduction. He discusses various analytical arguments that may provide a rationale for their existence, and uses three alternative methodologies to assess their relevance: a vector...

The author studies the links between macroeconomic adjustment and poverty. First, he summarizes some of the recent evidence on poverty in the developing world. Second, he reviews the various channels through which macroeconomic policies affect the poor. Third, the author emphasizes the role of...

The author examines whether output contraction associated with cyclical output fluctuations and economic crises have an asymmetric effect on poverty. He identifies four potential sources of asymmetry: expectations and cofident factors, credit rationing at the firm level (induced by either...

Ag?or attempts to examine analytically and empirically the extent to which globalization affects the poor in low- and middle-income countries. He begins with a description of various channels through which trade openness and financial integration may have an adverse effect on poverty. However,...

The authors develop a macroeconomic framework that captures links between aid, public investment, growth, and poverty. Public investment is disaggregated into education, infrastructure, and health, and affects both aggregate supply and demand. Dutch disease effects are captured by accounting for...

The authors present an integrated macroeconomic approach to monitoring progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Sub-Saharan Africa. At the heart of their approach is a macroeconomic model that captures key linkages between foreign aid, public investment (disaggregated...

The authors compare three approaches to linking representative-household macro models with micro household income data in terms of their implications for measuring the poverty and distributional effects of policy shocks. These approaches are a simple micro-accounting method, an extension of that...

The authors study the dynamics of output, consumption, and real wages induced by a disinflation program based on permanent and temporary reductions in the nominal devaluation rate. They use an intertemporal optimizing model of a small open economy in which domestic households face imperfect...