This paper examines the Staff-Monitored Program (SMP) for Malawi. The authorities have requested staff monitoring of their macroeconomic program for the 2004/05 fiscal year (June–July) with a view to establishing a performance track record that could lead to a new Poverty Reduction and Growth...

This note reflects macroeconomic and fiscal forecasts presented with the April 2009 World Economic Outlook, as well as information on fiscal stimulus and financial and industrial sector support gathered through mid-May. It follows the request by G-20 leaders for the Fund to assess regularly the...

This paper presents evidence that spillovers through bank lending, as opposed to trade linkages and country characteristics, can help explain contagion. We construct a measure of competition for bank funds and find evidence in favor of a common lender effect in the Mexican, Thai, and Russian...

Based on cross-country data for up to 78 countries, this paper shows that fiscal decentralization-the assignment of expenditure and revenue mobilization functions to subnational levels of government-is associated with various indicators of governance, such as corruption, rule of law, and...

This paper studies the effects of demand and supply shocks in the global crude oil market on several measures of countries'' external balance, including the oil and non-oil trade balances, the current account, and changes in net foreign assets (NFA) during 1975-2004. We explicitly take a global...

We provide a framework for analyzing the choice between optimal and robust monetary policy rules in the presence of paradigm uncertainty. We first discuss the conditions on uncertainty that render a robust rule preferable to an optimal rule. Second, we show how the degree of risk aversion of the...