The authors describe the main trends of Brazil's fiscal policy during the past decade and analyze (1) the ability to raise the primary surplus in response to external shocks, (2) the pro-cyclical nature of fiscal policy, and (3) the long-run impact of government expenditure composition and...

Despite significant progress in economic reform throughout the 1990s, and an exemplary development of the policymaking framework in the second part of the decade, Brazil suffered a major public debt and currency crisis in 2002. Though the political origin of the uncertainty cannot be ignored,...

Government spending in developing countries typically account for between 15 and 30 percent of GDP. Hence, small changes in the efficiency of public spending could have a major impact on GDP and on the attainment of the government's objectives. The first challenge that stakeholders face is...

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)...

This paper examines the role of primary fiscal balances as a signaling device in a world in which investors are uncertain about the sovereign's commitment to honor its obligations. Based on the Drudi-Prati model that rationalizes delayed stabilization and debt accumulation, we verify the...

This article uses a sample of 72 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 (PD), that is, the variation in financial resources required...

This paper gauges efficiency in container ports. Using non-parametric methods, we estimate efficiency frontiers based on information from 86 ports across the world. Three attractive features of the method are: 1) it is based on an aggregated measure of efficiency despite the existence of...

For the period 1992-98, domestic factors explain most output variability in Latin America. However, external factors account for about 60 percent of the 1998-99 slowdown - perhaps in part because external variables were more volatile during this period, but mainly because domestic variables -...

Models for an early warning system do a good job predicting vulnerability to macroeconomic crises in several Latin American countries.Herrera and Garcia develop an early warning system for macroeconomic vulnerability for several Latin American countries, drawing on the work of Kaminsky, Lizondo,...