This is a policy paper which examines the development challenges of the Caribbean island of Barbados against the backdrop of the government's decision to enter into a structural adjustment agreement with the International Monetary Fund in 2018. The paper gives an overview of Barbados' trajectory...

Recent work emphasizes the primacy of differences in countries' colonially-bequeathed property rights and legal systems for explaining differences in their subsequent economic development. Barbados and Jamaica provide a striking counter example to this long-run view of income determination. Both...

Keynesians propose that increases in tourist arrivals are associated with an expansion in private spending through the multiplier effect. To test this hypothesis, this study augments a simple consumption function with tourist arrivals and employs the dynamic OLS method to compute the short and...

Keynesians propose that increases in tourist arrivals are associated with an expansion in private spending through the multiplier effect. To test this hypothesis, this study augments a simple consumption function with tourist arrivals and employs the dynamic OLS method to compute the short and...

This paper analyzes gender earnings gaps in Barbados and Jamaica, using a matching comparisons approach. In both countries, as in most of the Caribbean region, females’ educational achievement is higher than that of males. Nonetheless, males’ earnings surpass those of their female peers....

This paper provides an assessment of the size and composition of household debt in Barbados over the period 1990 to 2010. First, the study estimates the size of household indebtedness, with particular emphasis on recent trends in household debt and the main providers of credit. Second, it...

This paper analyzes gender earnings gaps in Barbados and Jamaica, using a matching comparisons approach. In both countries, as in most of the Caribbean region, females' educational achievement is higher than that of males. Nonetheless, males' earnings surpass those of their female peers....

Most studies of total factor productivity (TFP) and long-term production functions use capital stock time series obtained from ad hoc estimates of the rate of depreciation and the initial capital stock. This paper introduces a methodology that allows the simultaneous econometric estimation of...

In the years since World War II Barbados was transformed from a desperately poor society, with only a tiny middle class, to today's economy of mostly middle-income earners, which is ranked by the UNDP among the highest level of human development globally. In this chapter we discover that the...

Barbados spends approximately seven percent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) on imported fuel, a significant amount in a foreign exchange constrained economy. In addition to the foreign exchange burden of imported fuel, the relatively high cost of electricity is a major constraint...