Bhutan has evolved from a closed economy to a trading nation that exhibits a high degree of dependence on trade. Exports have grown rapidly but overall the country’s trade deficit continues to widen owing to an even faster growth in the value of imports. The manufacturing and industry...

This paper assesses the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper of Vietnam, known as the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS). It is an action program to achieve economic growth and poverty reduction objectives. This paper reviews the objectives and tasks of socio-economic...

Mauritius’s economic performance has been called “the Mauritian miracle†and the “success of Africa†(Romer, 1992; Frankel, 2010; Stiglitz, 2011), despite difficult initial conditions that led a Nobel Prize Winner in economics to predict stagnation (Meade, 1961). We use growth...

This paper takes stock of the economic performance of resource rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the past forty years. While those countries have maintained high levels of income per capita, they have performed poorly when going beyond the assessment based on...

We develop a model to study the macroeconomic effects of public investment surges in low-income countries, making explicit: (i) the investment-growth linkages; (ii) public external and domestic debt accumulation; (iii) the fiscal policy reactions necessary to ensure debt-sustainability; and (iv)...