Public debt in the Middle East increased during the mid-1990s mainly because of fiscal expansions. It decreased in recent years, thanks to high oil revenue, economic growth, some primary non-oil fiscal adjustment, and debt relief. While countries in the Middle East appear to have adequately...

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...

Using data from three household surveys, we review whether growth in Mauritius was inclusive and discuss the incidence of public expenditures and taxes. Generally, Mauritius enjoys an even income distribution and low rates of poverty. Nevertheless, over the 2000s, despite overall progress, the...

This paper estimates the effect of grants and workers' remittances on Jordan's long-term equilibrium real exchange rate. We estimate an equilibrium path for the Jordanian real exchange rate using the Johansen cointegration methodology over the period 1964 to 2005. Controlling for other...

A decade into the transition, many of the successor states of the former Soviet Union (FSU) continue to use energy sector quasi-fiscal activities (QFAs), especially low energy prices and the toleration of payment arrears, to provide large implicit and untargeted subsidies. These activities...

We analyze the performance of the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) and its integration with other markets. Using cointegration techniques, we find that the ASE and other Arab stock markets are cointegrated, which implies little long-run risk diversification. However, there is no cointegrating...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. DATA AND METHODOLOGY -- III. MODELING AND INTERPRETING THE EQUILIBRIUM REAL EXCHANGE RATE -- IV. ASSESSING THE EQUILIBRIUM REAL EXCHANGE RATE -- V. CONCLUSIONS -- Appendix: Methodological Problems with Smoothing -- REFERENCES.

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS OF THE JORDANIAN CAPITAL MARKET -- III. LINKAGES OF THE ASE TO MAJOR ARAB, EMERGING, AND DEVELOPED STOCK MARKETS -- IV. STRENGTHS, VULNERABILITIES, AND MACROECONOMIC LINKAGES OF THE ASE -- V. CONCLUSIONS -- REFERENCES.

The paper explains the behavior of inflation in Georgia in the post-stabilization period. A long-run equation linking prices to money and the exchange rate, as well as a short-run, dynamic equation for inflation are estimated. The inflation equation is stable, points to a dominant role of the...

The paper presents numerical simulations of various fiscal rules for oil-producing countries. Welfare implications are sensitive to the choice of the social welfare function, initial conditions, and non-oil growth prospects. The distribution of non-oil wealth is important for countries with...