Tanzania is well placed to receive a significant increase in aid inflows in coming years. Despite the potential for the additional aid inflows to raise income levels in the country, increasing them may bring about structural changes in the economy that may be unwelcome. One such change is an...

This paper examines the impact of reducing corruption and improving transparency to lower trade costs in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation region. The authors find, based on a computable general equilibrium model, significant potential trade and welfare gains for Asia Pacific Economic...

Trade, financial, and exchange rate reforms are shown to have exerted a positive impact on the growth of total factor productivity in Rwanda during the period 1995-2003. Based on a constant returns-to-scale Cobb-Douglas production function, this paper regresses total factor productivity on...

This paper proposes a measure of synchronization in the movements of relevant domestic and foreign fundamentals for choosing suitable currency for denomination of foreign debt. The selection of explanatory variables for exchange rate volatility is motivated using a New Keynesian Policy model....

This paper quantifies the likely benefits of trade and investment liberalization in a small, poor, open economy, using the accession of Honduras to the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement as a case study. The results show that bilateral trade liberalization with the United...

According to the conventional wisdom, when an economy enters a recession and nominal prices adjust slowly, the monetary authority should devalue the domestic currency to make the recession less severe. The reason is that a devaluation of the currency lowers the relative price of non-tradable...

The author examines the impact of historical global downturns on trade flows. The results provide insight into why trade has dropped so dramatically in the current crisis, what is likely to happen in the coming years, how global imbalances are affected, and which regions and industries suffer...

Nearly two years after the onset of the financial crises, many central banks have brought their policy interest rates down to, or close to zero. Various governments have seen their budget deficits soar. Both policies have affected exchange rates, partly through market expectations. With a...

This paper re-emphasizes the link from structural policies to enhanced macroeconomic stabilization using a small structural model estimated on quarterly data for Macedonia and Slovakia over 1995-2007. The success of macroeconomic stabilization, typically in the hands of monetary policy, is not...

This paper uses a computable general equilibrium model to assess the welfare impact of commodity price inflation in Tanzania and possible tax policy responses in the short, medium, and long term. The results suggest that global commodity inflation since 2006 may have had a significantly negative...