The role of remittances in development and economic growth is not well understood. This is partly because the literatures on the causes and effects of remittances remain separate. We develop a framework that links the motivation for remittances with their effect on economic activity. Because...

The existing literature suggests a number of alternative methods to test for the presence of contagion during financial market crises. This paper reviews those methods and shows how they are related in a unified framework. A number of extensions are also suggested that allow for multivariate...

This paper evaluates a fiscal scenario based on the assumption of a rapid scaling-up of expenditure to be followed by a rapid scaling-down in the context of Azerbaijan''s current temporary oil production boom. To this end, it relies on a review of historical precedents and a neoclassical growth...

This paper continues the study of optimal fiscal policy in a growing economy by exploring a case in which the government simultaneously provides three main categories of expenditures with distortionary tax finance: public production services, public consumption services, and state-contingent...

The paper investigates the determinants and the macroeconomic role of remittances in sub-Saharan Africa, assembling the most comprehensive dataset available so far on remittances in the region and incorporating data on the diaspora. It finds that remittances are larger for countries with a...

Over the past decades, workers'' remittances have grown to become one of the largest sources of financial flows to developing countries, often dwarfing other widely-studied sources such as private capital and official aid flows. While it is undeniable that remittances have poverty-alleviating...

Regressions in a number of recent papers written by staff members of the World Bank and the IMF rely on an interaction variable (IAV) to establish the effects of foreign aid on economic growth or the reduction of poverty. The common assumption in these papers is that if the coefficient of this...

The paper provides an alternative explanation for the ""resource curse"" based on the income effect resulting from high government current spending in resource rich economies. Using a simple life cycle framework, we show that private investment in the non-resource sector is adversely affected if...

An error-correction model identifies determinants of growth consistent with results from panel regressions based on a standard Cobb-Douglas production function for El Salvador for 1970-1995, with structural factors affecting the technology variable and macroeconomics and expectations explaining...

The carbon tax is a major instrument for curbing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Yet its adoption has been limited because of concerns over its effects on economic growth, income distribution, and international competitiveness. The paper shows that policymakers can minimize...