Oil and mineral revenues raise national savings and hence facilitate investment, capital accumulation, and sustained growth; thus, there are benefits of owning large natural resources. There can be a significant spillover effect from the oil sector to the non-oil sector particularly if...

The paper uses repeated cross-sections of Bulgaria's household survey data (1995, 1997, 2001, and 2003) and a comparable list of durable goods to investigate the dynamics and distribution of durable goods over time, including during the economic crisis of 1996-1997 and the subsequent period of...

Over the past few decades, the foreign liabilities of the majority of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have grown dramatically, propelling most nations into the status of Highly Indebted Poor Countries, when these liabilities reached unsustainable levels in the 1990s. At the same time, increases...

Bank credit to Egypt's private sector decreased over the last decade, despite a recapitalized banking system and high rates of economic growth. Recent macro-economic turmoil has reinforced the trend. This paper explains the decrease based on credit supply and demand considerations by 1)...

In 2009, buffeted by the great recession, Thai gross domestic product fell by 2.3 percent. Using monthly data from the socio-economic surveys of 2007-2010, this paper finds, after controlling for household variables, that real consumption per capita rose in 2009 relative to 2008 for most groups,...

This paper studies the issue of real exchange rate misalignment and the difficulties in settling international real exchange rate disputes. The authors show theoretically that determining when a country should be sanctioned for real exchange rate"manipulations"is difficult: in some situations a...

This paper assesses the impact of introducing an efficient payment system on the amount of credit provided by the banking system. Two channels are investigated. First, innovations in wholesale payments technology enhance the security and speed of deposits as a payment medium for customers and...

Risk and its consequences pose a formidable threat to poverty reduction efforts. This study reviews a plethora of community-based risk management arrangements across the developing world. These types of arrangements are garnering greater interest in light of the growing recognition of the...

Sri Lanka's external performance defies global trends on two counts. First, the level of openness as measured by the ratio of trade in goods and services, after a strong increase in 1987-95 and stagnation in 1996-2004, sharply fell in 2005-10 to the levels experienced during the era of import...

This paper examines the microeconomics behind the dramatic export boom experienced by Turkey during the 2000s. Using disaggregated customs data covering the universe of export transactions for Turkey during the period 2002-2011, it characterizes firm-level dynamics in the export sector and...