This paper examines the effects of trade on growth among Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement countries. To accomplish this task, the authors collected a panel data set of 136 countries over 1960-2010, and estimated cross-country growth regressions using an econometric...

Workers' remittances have become a major source of income for developing countries. However, little is still known about their impact on poverty and inequality. Using a large cross-country panel dataset, the authors find that remittances in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have...

Africa’s Pulse is a biannual publication containing an analysis of the near-term macro-economic outlook for the region. It also includes a section focusing on a topic that represents a particular development challenges for the continent. It is produced by the Office of the Chief Economist for...

In the post-global financial crisis period, the financing of countercyclical policies led not only to a reduction in the fiscal surpluses across Sub-Saharan African countries, but also an increase in their levels of indebtedness. Although public debt for the region in 2018 was still below that...

This paper examines systematically the growth effects of trade integration in Sub-Saharan Africa. It complements and improves upon the empirical literature in two aspects: first, it jointly estimates the impact of different dimensions of trade integration, namely, trade volumes, export/trade...

This paper examines the growth effects of different dimensions of international trade integration -- notably, volume, diversification, and natural resource dependence -- in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, the paper documents the recent trends in these foreign trade dimensions for the region and the...

This paper discusses recent trends and investigates the drivers of capital flows across regions in the world, with emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa. The post-global financial crisis behavior of capital flows into Sub-Saharan Africa is unique and differs from that of global capital flows. The...

Infrastructure is viewed as a crucial ingredient to foster growth and productivity. Amid the post -- global financial crisis slowdown, Sub-Saharan Africa is in dire need to continue the growth momentum it experienced during the period of the Africa Rising narrative. An emerging consensus in the...

This paper presents new empirical evidence on how fiscal space in Sub-Saharan Africa has evolved over the past 15 years. Fiscal space is a multi-dimensional concept that is proxied by indicators capturing aspects of fiscal sustainability, balance sheet vulnerabilities, external debt positions,...