The paper examines the implications of lower trade barriers for sectoral diversification and macroeconomic stability in developing economies with a large primary goods sector. It shows that lower trade barriers can have ambiguous effects on macroeconomic stability. It shows also that...

This paper examines the role of corruption in the design of monetary policies for developing countries in a framework of fiscal and monetary interaction and obtains several interesting results. First, pegged exchange rates, currency boards, or dollarization, while often prescribed as a solution...

This pamphlet reports on how the enhanced Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) is meeting its aim of delivering faster, broader, and deeper debt relief to more HIPCs once these countries have shown a commitment to put the freed-up funds to work for the poor. The pamphlet also...

This volume presents the proceedings of a symposium that was orgainzed jointly by the IMF and the World Bank and held in Washington, D.C. The symposium was organized by Vittorio Corbo, Morris Goldstein, and Mohsin Khan. The papers review the design of, and the economic rationale behind,...

Based on papers presented at the 44th Congress of the international Institute of Public Finance, this book, edited by Vito Tanzi, deals with public finance and macroeconomic policy in open, developing economies, with case studies of Chile, Mexico, Turkey, Korea, and the Arab oil exporting countries

This paper analyses the fiscal effects of armed conflict and terrorism on low- and middle-income countries. An analysis of 22 conflict episodes shows that armed conflict is associated with lower growth and higher inflation, and has adverse effects on tax revenues and investment. It also leads to...

We examine the effects of aid on growth-- in cross-sectional and panel data--after correcting for the bias that aid typically goes to poorer countries, or to countries after poor performance. Even after this correction, we find little robust evidence of a positive (or negative) relationship...

The paper examines empirically the question of whether more unequal societies spend more on income redistribution than their more egalitarian counterparts. Theoretical arguments on this issue are inconclusive. The political economy literature suggests that redistributive spending is higher in...

This paper uses an overlapping generations model with international labor mobility and a politically responsive fiscal policy to examine aging in developed and developing regions. Migrant workers change the political structure composed of young and elderly voters in both labor-receiving and...

The paper reviews the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) approach and efforts to build institutional statistical capacity to permit evidence-based monitoring of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). Integrating the PRS approach and statistical development strategies could provide...