While it is clear that financial depth and economic diversity are prerequisites for the realisation of growth and development objectives, heterogeneous factors that determines financial development remains imperfectly understood. This ambiguity in the structural relations between varied...

While the severe global recession seems to be bottoming out and the global economic outlook is turning cautiously optimistic, the negative impact of the crisis on many African countries continues to deepen. The crisis has hit Africa with a lag, interrupting at best, and ending at worst, the...

Over the past 30 years (1990-2019), African economies have experienced remarkable improvements in real macroeconomic conditions, characterized by higher and more stable real per-capita growth rates, and lower and more stable inflation. This paper documents and seeks to explain these changes at...

We examine the properties of alternative monetary policy rules in response to large aid surges in low-income countries characterized by incomplete capital market integration and currency substitution. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, we show that simple monetary rules that...

This paper investigates the macroeconomic challenges created by a surge in aid inflows. It develops an analytical framework for examining possible policy responses to increased aid, in terms of absorption and spending of aid - where the central bank controls absorption through monetary policy...

Recent research suggests that adopting a common currency increases bilateral trade. In this paper, I explore experiences of currency union entry in the post-war period and find no effect on trade. Previous results derived from a large panel data set (covering more than 200 countries from 1948...