The Middle East and Central Asia’s economic growth potential is slowing faster than in other emerging and developing regions, dampening hopes for reducing persistent unemployment and improving the region’s generally low living standards. Why? And is it possible to alter this...

The recent global financial crisis illustrates that financial frictions are a significant source of volatility in the economy. This paper investigates monetary policy stabilization in an environment where financial frictions are a relevant source of macroeconomic fluctuation. We derive a measure...

Korea’s rapid growth has slowed in recent years, suggesting lower potential growth. This paper uses an array of techniques, including statistical filters, a multivariate model and the production function, to estimate Korea’s potential growth. The main finding is that trend growth...

In this paper we present various techniques to estimate Sri Lanka’s potential output and output gap, including statistical and model-based approaches. Compared to conventional statistical filters that rely exclusively on information in a single series, the model-based approaches allow...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has of late been revered as the solution to a great deal of the developing world’s problems. This paper seeks to examine the macroeconomic link between foreign direct investment in South Africa, and its resultant impact on potential output. Cointegration...

This paper re-examines the role of equity and corporate bond financing in spurring US economic growth. Annual data from 1960 through 2008 are utilised. The variables in levels are non-stationary with different orders of integration. Thus, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) procedure is...