Using two macroeconomic models and results, the authors simulate global outcomes in the 1990s under several scenarios, allowing for the impact of: (a) changes in industrial countries'financial and macroeconomic conditions; (b) changes in the international oil market; and (c) changes in...

The 1994 World Bank study,"Adjustment in Africa: reforms, results, and the road ahead,"assessed the extent of, and economic payoffs from, policy reform in 29 countries in sub-Saharan Africa in the mid-1980s and 1990s. Here, the authors update the results of that report with 1992 macroeconomic...

The author provides theoretical and empirical evidence of a negative association between income inequality and real exchange rates. First, he builds a theoretical model showing the transmission mechanism from inequality to real exchange rates. Second, using cross-country data, he demonstrates...

The authors analyze sectoral growth in Ecuador, using multivariate co-integration analysis. They find significant long-run relationships between the agricultural, industrial, and service sectors. Moreover, they are able to derive dynamic sector models that combine the short-run links between the...

There has been much debate recently about the role of international development institutions, such as the World Bank in middle-income countries. Some observers have suggested that middle-income countries have reached a stage in their economic development that calls into question the rationale...

Policy recommendations to reduce the growth of public spending are haunted by the inevitability of two factors. First Wagner's law, the hypothesis that with economic development an increasing share of GDP is devoted to public spending, and secondly, Baumol's effect, that as economies develop,...

The difficulties most Latin American countries have experienced in returning to sustained growth after the world recession and debt crisis of 1982 have surprised and frustrated many observers. Concern is increasingly expressed about the social costs of this period of recession and adjustment,...

The authors investigate the relationship between weak growth performance and low investment rates in Africa. The cross-country evidence suggests no direct relationship. The positive and significant coefficient on private investment appears to be driven by Botswana's presence in the sample....

The effect of adjustment policies on different groups in the population is an important and complex issue. The distributional implications can have a large influence on the sustainability of programs. In particular, there is a need to identify how different groups in society are affected by an...

A look at the data reveals that in OECD countries, economic fluctuations exhibit a high degree of synchronization. In 1965-90, cross-country contemporaneous GDP growth correlations averaged 45 percent. This suggests that a central element of any theory of economic fluctuations should be an...