Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the main determinants of dependency on food aid programmes. Food aid may take the form of a loan, a sale below market price or a current transfer. Food aid programmes across the globe are generally designed to provide short-term assistance...

How can monetary authorities determine whether the current account balance is problematic? One method is based on the intertemporal consumption-smoothing model. This paper applies the intertemporal consumption-smoothing model - which is used to derive the optimal current account - to Barbados,...

Purpose: One of the main factors that can impact the cost of holidays to a particular destination is the exchange rate; exchange rate fluctuations impact the overall price of the holiday and should be expected to effect tourism demand. This paper aims to scrutinize the volatility of the real...

Purpose – Remittances are the fastest growing source of foreign exchange earnings for developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of remittances on economic volatility of the receiving country. Design/methodology/approach – A panel of 95 countries over the period...

Purpose – Developing countries tend to be characterised by relatively high levels of indebtedness. The proceeds from debt can potentially have positive effects on growth, if the funds are employed to expand the productive capacity of the nation. The paper aims to investigate whether debt can...

This study attempts to identify the key structural and institutional factors that influence the decision to export using a database of 8,047 firms in manufacturing, services and agricultural activity and in 81 countries. A Probit model of the export decision is estimated for the full sample of...

In countries without an explicit inflation targeting mechanism, a stable relationship between the monetary base and the money supply allows policymakers to implement changes in monetary policy with a reasonable degree of certainty about the impact on the money supply. The relationship can,...

Estimates of the output gap are useful for identifying the sustainable level of noninflationary output growth in countries with a flexible exchange rate regime. For nations with a fixed exchange rate, however, domestic prices are inexorably linked to the prices of its main trading partners and...

Economic theory suggests that opening the capital account should allow a country to diversify away economic shocks, increase capital inflows, expand economic growth and efficiency as well as encourage governments to pursue good policies. The empirical evidence with regard to these theoretical...

Capital account liberalization can potentially have important effects on the economy. Numerous techniques have been employed in the literature to quantify these restrictions. These include <italic>ex-post</italic> macroeconomic indicators, regression-based indices and qualitative indices of capital control...