The paper evaluates the key drivers of fiscal crises in a sample of countries from all three income groups-advanced, emerging, and low-income countries, using fiscal crisis data recently developed by the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department. The empirical study focuses on three questions: (1) How...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. POLITICAL AND SECURITY SITUATION -- III. ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE SINCE 1970 -- IV. THE ROLE OF OIL IN CONGO -- V. NATURAL RESOURCES AND GROWTH -- VI. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE DETERMINANTS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH -- VII. REAL EFFECTIVE EXCHANGE RATE...

International oil producers have discovered commercially recoverable petroleum reserves of around 11 billion barrels that promise to transform Guyana's agricultural and mining economy into an oil powerhouse, while hopefully helping to diversify the non-oil economy. Oil production presents a...

Amid controversies surrounding aid effectiveness, an increasing number of empirical studies find support for the idea that aid can spur growth and that the aid-growth relationship is nonlinear. Lensink and White propose a model to illustrate the possible existence of what has been labeled an...

This paper examines the impact of interest rates and inflation on bank loans and investment within a framework that mimics the financial sectors prevailing in most low-income developing countries. The paper emphasizes the importance of treating the lending and deposit rates of interest as...

With official development assistance (ODA) set to rise as countries strive to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), aid effectiveness remains an important area of development policy. An increasing number of studies support the notion that ODA can contribute to growth in a nonlinear...

Uganda's market-friendly development strategy and poverty reduction agenda have attracted large financial inflows, including aid. During 2000-02, concerns about a possible aid-induced Dutch disease were heightened by widening macroeconomic imbalances and an upward trend in the real effective...

This paper demonstrates that the Dutch disease need not materialize in low-income countries that can draw on their idle productive capacity to satisfy the aid-induced increased demand. Diagnoses on, and prognoses for, the Dutch disease should take into account country-specific circumstances to...

We analyze the link between nonperforming loans (NPL) and macroeconomic performance using two complementary approaches. First, we investigate the macroeconomic determinants of NPL in panel regressions and confirm that adverse macroeconomic developments are associated with rising NPL. Second, we...

This paper investigates the prospects for Ireland to grow its economy against the backdrop of high indebtedness. The paper uses vector autoregressive analysis to explore the interlinkages among competitiveness, exports, economic growth, and fiscal performance. The emerging conclusion is that...