This paper analyzes the optimal rate of monetary expansion when government resorts to inflationary finance to generate additional investment for enhancing growth. If there are lags in tax collection, an increase in inflation erodes real fiscal revenue, thereby worsening the current balance while...

This paper investigates the medium- and long-term growth effects of the global financial crises on Low-Income Countries (LICs). Using several methodological approaches, including impulse response function analysis, growth spells techniques and panel regressions, we show that external demand (ED)...

The October 2009 Per Jacobsson Lecture, delivered in Istanbul in conjunction with the 2009 Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank, examined the issue of longer-run growth prospects for the global economy following the recent global economic crisis. Will the world be able, in the five to ten...

The links between trade and growth are examined in a neoclassical model of an open economy in which domestic production requires both domestic and imported inputs. The model shows that trade distortions induced by such government policies as tariffs and exchange controls generate cross-country...

In this study, the authors assess financial sector development in the MENA regionand propose several policy measures, which include reinforcing the institutional environment and promoting nonbank financial sector development, to enhance this sector’s performance

This booklet is a collection of papers presented at a seminar on policies for growth in Africa, held in Paris in February 1995 and sponsored by the Ministry of Finance of Japan. The seminar focused on four broad themes: how to enable the private sector to play a lead role in the growth process...

BRICs development financing flows have increased significantly and are expected to become more prominent in the post-crisis era. We investigate the potential implications on the country-allocation of loan commitments and the degree of concessionality using a panel vector autoregression model and...

This paper examines the empirical relationship between long–run growth and the degree of financial development, proxied by the ratio of bank credit to the private sector as a fraction of GDP. We find that this proxy enters significantly and with a positive sign in growth regressions on a large...

Central America experienced moderate growth during the last decade, including in the years leading up to the global financial crisis, but the rate of convergence toward advanced country income levels has still been slow. Moreover, forecasts imply that these trends will continue. What can be done...

The factors underlying the rise in U.S. income inequality since the mid-1970s are examined. The results suggest that the trend increase in income inequality has not been related to macroeconomic developments, such as income growth or import penetration, but that the income distribution is...