The current slowdown in the Norwegian economy has followed an exceptionally prolonged phase of expansion. The current slowdown in economic growth is expected to continue. Over the longer term, the public finances face challenges as oil revenues begin to run out and pension liabilities escalate....

This paper analyzes certain policies that are typical of a number of rapidly growing East Asian countries in which a fixed exchange rate, combined with a surplus labor market, has made domestic assets relatively inexpensive, generating high rates of FDI as well as domestic capital formation....

This paper examines the progress made in four Asian transition economies—China, Lao P.D.R., Vietnam, and Mongolia—to market-based systems. Overall, these economies appear to have had a more favorable experience with inflation stabilization and output growth than that of transition economies...

This paper examines the effect of the real exchange rate misalignment (RERMIS) on the collective economic growth of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia. The paper constructs three measures of exchange rate misalignment based on purchasing power parity; a black market exchange rate; and a...

Since 1995, Tanzania has made major progress in economic reform and macroeconomic stabilization, resulting in strong growth and low inflation. This paper reviews Tanzania''s growth performance and prospects and assesses the impact of growth on poverty. It finds that growth has been increasingly...

This survey of the recent literature asks: how important is trade policy for poverty reduction? We consider the effects of openness on poverty in two components: the effect of openness on average income growth, and the effect on distribution for a given growth rate. Evidence from a variety of...

This study assesses the economic implications of China''s changing population in the 21st century using a numerical general equilibrium model. The simulations show that lower fertility rates yield lower saving rates. Since lower fertility rates reduce the future supply of labor, capital will...

Under what conditions should grants be preferred to loans? To answer this question, we present a simple model à la Krugman (1988) and show that, for any given level of developmental assistance, the optimal degree of loan concessionality is positively associated with economic growth if countries...

This paper proposes a new way of computing a coincident indicator for economic activity in France using data from business surveys. We use the generalized dynamic factor model à la Forni and others (2000) to extract common components from a large number of survey observations. The results...

This paper analyzes the weak growth performance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region during 1980-2000 using an empirical model of long-run growth. The relative importance of the factors affecting growth is shown to vary across 16 MENA countries. In GCC countries, where oil revenues...