A range of alternative empirical definitions of informal activity have been employed in the literature. Choice of definition is often dictated by data availability. Different definitions may imply very different conceptual understandings of informality. In this paper the authors investigate the...

This paper examines the effects of inflation targeting on industrial and emerging economies' output growth over the "globalization years" of 1986-2004. Controlling for trade openness and two indicators of financial globalization, the authors find systematic positive and significant effects of...

Do sources of volatility differ by country characteristics such as the level of development, country size, quality of institutions, and presence of restrictions on fiscal policy? This paper sets out to answer this question in a quarterly panel of 48 developed and developing countries for...

This paper aims to document a set of stylized facts characterizing business cycle dynamics in smaller economies. The paper uses a large sample of countries spanning 1960-2014 to show that country size is a significant factor affecting countries' volatility, comovement with gross domestic product...

The authors study the empirical, cross-country relationship between macroeconomic volatility and long-run economic growth. They address four central questions: 1) Does the volatility-growth link depend on country and policy characteristics, such as the level of development or trade openness? 2)...

Established in 2010, the Eurasian Customs Union (ECU) carries significant economic weight as three of its member countries represent a potentially large consumer market. Drawing on existing literature that has studied the likely impacts of the ECU in Central Asia, this note discusses the ECU's...