Rapid growth among the major emerging markets over the past 20 years has boosted global demand for commodities. The seven largest emerging markets accounted for almost all the increase in global consumption of metals, and two-thirds of the increase in energy consumption over this period. As...

Potential growth — the rate of expansion an economy can sustain at full capacity and employment — is a critical driver of development progress. It is also a major input in the formulation of fiscal and monetary policies over the business cycle. This paper introduces the most comprehensive...

Monetary and fiscal policies around the world are in better shape today than two decades ago. This paper studies whether financial globalization has helped induce governments to pursue better macroeconomic policies (the ""discipline effect""). The empirical tests have two innovations. First, we...

The literature on the benefits and costs of financial globalization for developing countries has exploded in recent years, but along many disparate channels and with a variety of apparently conflicting results. For instance, there is still little robust evidence of the growth benefits of broad...

This paper introduces a global database that contains inflation series: (i) for a wide range of inflation measures (headline, food, energy, and core consumer price inflation; producer price inflation; and gross domestic product deflator changes); (ii) at multiple frequencies (monthly, quarterly...