In the 1990s macroeconomic policies improved in a majority of developing countries, but the growth dividend from such improvement fell short of expectations, and a policy agenda focused on stability turned out to be associated with a multiplicity of financial crises. The authors take a...

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...

Economic stability, sound macroeconomic policies, and appropriate microeconomic incentives hold down a country's external debt burden. Most of the Asian countries pursued prudent macroeconomic policies, paid attention to price stability, and minimized price distortions. These countries avoided...

Despite the surge in private capital flows in the 1990s, lending by the multilateral development banks continues to be a significant source of external finance for low-income and lower-middle-income countries. And for middle-income countries, which receive the lion's share of private flows,...

The authors study what drives private capital flows to developing countries, as well as the apparent response of official lending for the years 1978-97. Econometric results reveal that non-foreign direct investment portfolio flows to a country tended to rise in response to: 1) An increase in the...

The empirical literature on finance and development suggests that countries with better developed financial systems experience faster economic growth. Financial development-as captured by size, depth, efficiency, and reach of financial systems-varies sharply around the world, with large...

The authors explore the relationship between financial structure - the degree to which a financial system is market- or bank-based - and economicdevelopment. They use three methodologies: 1) The cross-country approach uses cross-country data to assess whether economies grow faster with market-...

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 author presents and implements a methodology for assessing the success of structural adjustment based on a"fixed effect"method. He examines data for 75 countries over 11 years. Performance indicators include measures of inflation, economic growth, external balance, and physical investment....