This paper focuses on the Doha Development Agenda. The paper highlights that over the past 20 years, world trade has grown twice as fast as world real GDP, deepening economic integration and raising living standards. The paper underscores that the launch of a new trade round in Doha in November...

This paper highlights that the Washington Consensus helped fill the need for an economic policy framework following the discrediting of central planning and import-substitution trade strategies. Latin American governments championed the Consensus in the early 1990s, and the policy agenda...

This paper highlights that for the IMF, July 2004 marked the 60th anniversary of the conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, when delegations from 44 allied countries drafted and agreed upon the IMF’s charter. The IMF’s role and work have evolved in response, but like any large...

This paper discusses the IMF's New Facilities for Structural Adjustment (SAF) for helping the poor. The first arrangement supported by the SAF was approved by the IMF's Executive Board in August 1986. By the end of February 1992, 35 countries had already used resources under SAF arrangements and...

This evaluation examines the technical assistance (TA) provided by the IMF to its member countries. The evaluation is based on desk reviews of a broad sample of countries, analyses of cross-country data on TA, six in-depth country case studies, reviews of past evaluations, and interviews with...

We test the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in a cross-country regression framework, utilizing data on FDI flows from industrial countries to 69 developing countries over the last two decades. Our results suggest that FDI is an important vehicle for the transfer of...

Trade and financial ties between low-income countries (LICs) and Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRICs) have expanded rapidly in recent years. This gives rise to the potential for growth to spill over from the latter to the former. We employ a global vector autoregression (GVAR) model to...

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The Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) is used by the IMF to provide support for countries’ implementation of their poverty reduction and growth strategies. A key requirement in the design of PRGF programs is understanding the effects of reform program measures on vulnerable...

Ukraine was one of the countries hardest hit by the global economic and financial crisis; it was also one of the first countries supported by a Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). The Ex Post Evaluation of Exceptional Access Under the 2008 SBA reveals that the achievement of program objectives was...