This Selected Issues paper on Papua New Guinea reports that although economic cycles have generally paralleled the many mineral sector booms and busts, the downward trend in growth rates may reflect other factors. Papua New Guinea’s economy is dominated by a large labor-intensive...

The challenge of achieving broad-based growth in Lesotho is discussed. Economic growth is inconsistent. Lesotho is highly dependent on trade with South Africa. The sources of growth in Lesotho using a social accounting matrix model and a growth-accounting framework are outlined. The main...

The Selected Issues paper on the Russian Federation discusses the economic growth and future growth potential of the country. After almost a decade of impressive growth performance, Russia suffered a sharp contraction in 2009 with GDP falling by 8 percent. This paper gives an overview of the...

This Selected Issues paper examines the sources of real growth in Guinea. It identifies and quantifies the impact on real GDP growth of both the exogenous shocks and the policy changes that have occurred since 2000. The paper offers, first, some empirical evidence on real GDP growth in Guinea...

This Selected Issues paper on Sri Lanka underlies the dynamics of growth and external competitiveness. The slowdown in the contribution of sectors that are labor intensive, together with faster growth in sectors that are capital intensive and have higher productivity levels, resulted in total...

How to entrench hard-won gains, increase resilience to shocks, and improve growth performance to reduce poverty? As Central America moves forward in regaining macroeconomic stability, these are the challenges. This study analyzes Central America’s real, fiscal, monetary, and financial...

This Selected Issues paper on Sri Lanka reviews several issues that highlight both Sri Lanka’s accomplishments and their policy constraints amidst a protracted period of civil conflict and political instability. High intermediation costs have held back development of the financial sector...

This chapter reviews developments in GDP over the past several decades. The analysis shows that accumulation of labor and capital explains the bulk of overall output growth since 1990, with changes in total factor productivity playing only a minor role. Moreover, while increases in total factor...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the growth prospects of the Greek economy. It is estimated that exceptional factors boosted growth by 1 percentage point per year in recent years and, under current trends and policies, growth is likely to drop to about 3 percent by the end of the decade. The...