This paper builds on the methodology developed by Chudik and Mongardini (2007) to estimate the relationship between grants and remittances and the equilibrium real exchange rate in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries using panel techniques. The results indicate that grants and remittances are...

The paper reviews Sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) (i) own market access commitments in the Uruguay Round, and (ii) the nature of the constraints on SSA policies set by the Uruguay Round. It concludes that SSA failed to use the Uruguay Round to lock domestic reforms to an international anchor. Apart...

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to record strong economic growth, despite the weaker global economic environment. Regional output rose by 5 percent in 2011, with growth set to increase slightly in 2012, helped by still-strong commodity prices, new resource exploitation, and the improved domestic...

This study indentifies some of the taxation problems most frequently encountered by Fund member countries in sub-Saharan Africa and seeks solutions that may be useful to either the region as a whole or to groups of countries in the region

Financial sectors in low-income sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are among the world's least developed. In fact, assets in most low-income African countries are smaller than those held by a single medium-sized bank in an industrial country. The absence of deep, efficient financial markets seriously...

Economic stagnation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has led several economists to question the region’s ability to attain sustained economic growth, some of them arguing for the need to shift away from natural resource - based exports. Yet, we find that low growth has not been common to all SSA...

This paper studies the evolution of the exchange rates of sub-Saharan African currencies in the context of the global financial crisis. In particular, it analyzes the reasons behind the differences in the magnitude and volatility of the exchange rates among countries. To this end, it takes a...

This paper examines the determinants of net interest margins in four regional blocks in Sub-Saharan Africa and one comparator block in the Eastern Caribbean. Using bank-level data, we find that countries with a high level of operating costs, a high ratio of equity to total assets and high...

The paper explores the quality of the recent high-growth episode in sub-Saharan Africa by examining the following two questions: (i) what has been the nature and pattern of SSA growth over the past 15 years and how does it compare with previous episodes? (ii) has this growth had an impact on...