The objective of this paper is to inform Liberia's medium-term growth and development strategy for 2012-17 and its National Vision: Liberia Rising 2030, both of which are under preparation. The analysis is based on MAMS (Maquette for MDG [Millennium Development Goal]) Simulations, a computable...

Evidence from a large panel of low-income and lower middle-income countries over the period 1995-2012 suggests that, contrary to other countries, public investment in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) has been pro-cyclical. Public investment contracts more in"bad times"than it...

Promoting sustainable development calls for investing rents from exhaustible mineral resources into human, physical and social capital, so as to protect the wealth of countries and the economic opportunities of their citizens. This has been difficult in well-governed Ghana in the last decade; and...

This paper attempts to identify Lebanon's greatest constraints to economic growth, following a growth diagnosis approach. It concludes that fiscal imbalances and barriers to entry are most binding on long-term growth. Macroeconomic imbalances and related perceived risks affect the nature of...

Recent empirical studies question conventional wisdom about the importance of education to growth. These results partly reflect how international differences in the quality of education systems--defined by the systems'ability to produce one marginal unit of productive human capital--are not...

With growing international skilled labor mobility, education and migration decisions have become increasingly inter-related, and potentially have a large impact on the growth trajectories of source countries, through their effects on labor supply, savings, or the cost of education. The authors...

This paper uses a sample of 73 developing countries to estimate the change in the cost of alleviating urban poverty brought about by the recent increase in food prices. This cost is approximated by the change in the poverty deficit, that is, the variation in financial resources required to...

With growing international skilled labor mobility, education and migration decisions have become increasingly inter-related, and potentially have a large impact on the growth trajectories of source countries, through their effects on labor supply, savings, or the cost of education. The authors...

This paper uses a sample of 73 developing countries to estimate the change in the cost of alleviating urban poverty brought about by the recent increase in food prices. This cost is approximated by the change in the poverty deficit, that is, the variation in financial resources required to...

This paper contributes to the double dividend debate with a formal analysis and some numerical evidence emphasizing trade and environmental distortions with a substitution of environmental taxes for trade distortions. We derive existence conditions and we empirically explore the...