This paper reviews the impact of the global financial turmoil and the subsequent recession on the economies of southern and eastern Mediterranean countries. The major effects on the economies of this region have come through transmission channels associated with the real economy, i.e. the global...

This paper provides an overall picture of the Philippine business cycles covering the period 1981 to 2003 by characterizing them in terms of volatility, co-movement and persistence. As a trend-cycle decomposition technique, the most frequently used Hodrick Prescott filter was applied. The period...

As elsewhere, the Colombian private sector has been accused of promoting or profiting from violence in the country. However, the private sector's role in the armed conflict and the impact of conflict on entrepreneurial activity vary, as reflected by differences in political activism, in...

Social protection systems in developing countries are typically composed of a bundle of benefits, the major ones being health insurance and pensions. Benefit bundling may increase informality and decrease welfare. Indeed, if some of the benefits are valued at substantially less than their cost,...

In this paper we analyze how the availability of credit influences the relationship between government size as a proxy for fiscal stabilization policy and the amplitude of business cycle fluctuations in a sample of advanced OECD countries. Interpreting relatively low loan-tovalue ratios as an...

What happens if the government's willingness to stabilize a large stock of debt is waning, while the central bank is adamant about preventing a rise in inflation? The large fiscal imbalance brings about inflationary pressures, triggering a monetary tightening, further debt accumulation, and...

The financial crisis has brought about an economic recession which is more severe and widespread than any decline in production in the past 50 years. In the USA and Europe the decline in production over the entire economy was, however, much less than during the Great Depression of the 1930s....