This paper assesses how pro-poor and inclusive Asia’s recent growth has been, and what factors have been driving these outcomes. It finds that while poverty has fallen across the region over the last two decades, inequality has increased, dampening the impact of growth on poverty reduction. As...

Japan's potential growth rate is steadily falling with the aging of its population. This paper explores the extent to which raising female labor participation can help slow this trend. Using a cross-country database we find that smaller families, higher female education, and lower marriage rates...

In contrast to advanced markets (AMs), procyclical monetary policy has been a problem for emerging markets (EMs), with macroeconomic policies amplifying economic upswings and deepening downturns. The stark difference in policy has not been subject to extensive study and this paper attempts to...

South-South trade agreements are proliferating: Developing countries signed 70 new agreements between 1990 and 2003. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown. This paper focuses on the static effects of South-South preferential trade agreements stemming from changes in trade...

The Great Recession pushed Japan’s unemployment rate to historic highs, but the increase has been small by international standards and small relative to the large output shock. This paper explores Japan’s cyclical labor market response to the global financial crisis. Our findings suggest...

Net capital flows to emerging Asia rebounded at a record pace following the global financial crisis, raising concerns about overheating and financial stability. This paper documents the size and composition of the most recent surge to Asian emerging markets from a historical perspective and...

The U.S. labor force participation rate (LFPR) fell dramatically following the Great Recession and has yet to start recovering. A key question is how much of the post-2007 decline is reversible, something which is central to the policy debate. The key finding of this paper is that while around...

Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience...

This paper aims to improve the understanding of U.S. inflation dynamics by separating out structural from cyclical effects using frequency domain techniques. Most empirical studies of inflation dynamics do not distinguish between secular and cyclical movements, and we show that such a...

This paper sheds light on the attractiveness of U.S. assets by studying dollar risk premiums, calculated using Consensus exchange rate forecasts, and linking them to bilateral capital flows. The paper finds that the presence of negative dollar risk premiums (i.e. expectations of a dollar...