In recent years, recommendations for countries to unilaterally dollarize/eurorize have become common, particularly when the countries lack economic credibility. After exploring the characteristics of dollarizing/eurorizing economies, we look at the merits and costs of unilateral eurorization for...

This paper identifies factors that contribute to a fast recovery in growth after persistent negative terms of trade shocks, using a sample of 159 countries for 1970-2006. The results suggest that policies matter. Fast recoveries are fairly robustly related to real exchange rate depreciation and...

This study estimates the impact of corruption on the revenue generating capacity of different tax categories in the Middle East. We find that the low revenue collection as a share of GDP there compared to other middle-income regions is due in part to corruption, and certain taxes are more...

Using a newly complied and extended database from International Financial Statistics, and applying different panel-regression techniques, this paper documents the evolution of households' and firms' dollarization over the past decade. We assess the macroeconomic determinants of dollarization for...

This paper analyzes the impact of citizenship laws on economic development. We first document the evolution of citizenship laws around the world, highlighting the main features of jus soli, jus sanguinis as well as mixed regimes, and shedding light on the channels through which they could have...

The growth literature has had problems explaining the quot;sub-Saharan African growth dummyquot; in cross-country regressions. Instead of taking the usual approach of focusing on long-run growth and assuming that sub-Saharan countries have homogenous parameters in growth regressions, we...

We describe unique aspects of microstates - they are less diversified, suffer from lumpiness of investment, they are geographically at the periphery and prone to natural disasters, and have less access to capital markets - that may make the current account more vulnerable, penalizing exports and...

We assess the competitiveness of Mauritius in recent years using two approaches. First, we estimate the difference between the equilibrium and the actual real exchange rate using four methods: the macroeconomic balance approach, the single-equation fundamentals approach, the capital-enhanced...

The rapid growth of Islamic banking has attracted much attention lately in the economic literature. At the same time, a mature body of the literature has shown that financial development is broadly conducive to economic growth, which raises the question as to whether a similar conclusion holds...

We assess the competitiveness of Mauritius in recent years using two approaches. First, we estimate the difference between the equilibrium and the actual real exchange rate using four methods: the macroeconomic balance approach, the single-equation fundamentals approach, the capital-enhanced...