Empirical evidence - including the current global crisis - suggests that shocks from advanced countries often have a disproportionate effect on developing economies. Can this account for the fact that aggregate fluctuations are larger and more persistent in the latter than in the former...

The authors study the effects of regulation on economic growth and the relative size of the informal sector in a large sample of industrial and developing countries. Along with firm dynamics, informality is an important channel through which regulation affects macroeconomic performance and...

"This paper studies the causes and consequences of informality and applies the analysis to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. It starts with a discussion on the definition and measures of informality, as well as on the reasons why widespread informality should be of great concern. The...

The 1994 crisis in Mexico, developments in East Asia, and persistent turmoil in world financial markets have dramatized the role of external imbalances in macroeconomic crises. Some believe that the current account should be kept from rising beyond a sustainable level, some that a current...

March 2000 - Saving rates vary considerably across countries and over time. Policies that spur development are an indirect but effective way to raise private saving rates - which rise with the level and growth rate of real per capita income. Loayza, Schmidt-Hebbel, and Servén investigate the...

This paper surveys the academic and policy debate on the roots of global imbalances, their role in the inception of the global crisis, and their prospects in its aftermath. The conventional view holds that global imbalances result primarily from unsustainably high demand for goods in the United...

This book presents the results of about three years of work finished in early 1992 in the area of private investment and macroeconomic adjustment. Its purpose is to explore the macroeconomic determinants of investment and the causes and cures for the gap between maroeconomic adjustment and...

Solvency is an intertemporal concept, relating to the present value of revenues and expenditures, and encompassing both assets and liabilities. But the standard practice among policy makers, financial market participants and international financial institutions is to assess the strength of the...