A well developed financial system enhances competition in the industrial sector by allowing easier entry. The impact varies across industries, however. For some, small changes in financial development quickly induce entry and dissipate incumbents'rents, generating strong incentives to oppose...

The authors examine the empirical links between current account deficits and a broad set of economic variables proposed in the literature. To accomplish this, they complement and extend previous research by using a large, consistent set of macroeconomic data on public and private domestic...

For most of the 13 African members of the CFA Franc Zone, the 1980s have been a decade of slow or negative growth in per capita gross domestic product, worsening balance of payments, debt crises, financial crises declining competitiveness, and an apparent failure to adjust to the changed...

Since the debt crisis, many countries are still struggling to achieve a current account situation that is compatible with reduced external financing and a moderate but sustainable rate of output growth. A key element of a successful medium term strategy is to move resources into the export...

Starting from the premise that agriculture should be pivotal in the structural transformation and economic development of sub - Saharan Africa, the author addresses two related issues. First, the extent to which policy induced distortions influence the structure of incentives for agriculture...

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...

In the context of an empirical model, the authors examine the impact of capital flows, among other fundamentals, on long-term exchange rates in Chile. The real exchange rate and its fundamentals were found to be cointegrated during 1960-92. This cointegration allows a reinterpretation of...

The authors study the apparent contradiction between two strands of the literature on the effects of financial intermediation on economic activity. On the one hand, the empirical growth literature finds a positive effect of financial depth as measured by, for instance, private domestic credit...

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...