The authors describe the main trends of Brazil's fiscal policy during the past decade and analyze (1) the ability to raise the primary surplus in response to external shocks, (2) the pro-cyclical nature of fiscal policy, and (3) the long-run impact of government expenditure composition and...

The authors test for the existence of asset price bubbles in Latin America in 1980-2001, focusing mainly on stock prices. Based on unit root and cointegration tests, they find that they cannot reject the hypothesis of bubbles. They arrive at the same conclusion using Froot and Obstfeld's...

Recent estimates of the welfare cost of consumption volatility find that it is significant in developing nations, where it may reach an equivalent of reducing consumption by 10 percent per year. Hence, examining the determinants of consumption volatility is of utmost relevance. Based on...

This paper uses a sample of 73 developing countries to estimate the change in the cost of alleviating urban poverty brought about by the recent increase in food prices. This cost is approximated by the change in the poverty deficit, that is, the variation in financial resources required to...

Given that public spending will have a positive impact on GDP if the benefits exceed the marginal cost of public funds, the present paper deals with measuring costs and benefits of public spending. The paper discusses one cost seldom considered in the literature and in policy debates, namely,...

The authors explain Latin America's growth slowdown in 1998-1999. To do so, they use two complementary methodologies. The first aims at determining how much of the slowdown can be explained by specific external factors: the terms of trade, international interest rates, spreads on external debt,...

This paper examines the determinants of the productivity of Nigerian firms, using three waves of Enterprise Surveys from 2007, 2009, and 2014 and 7,670 firms. The paper uses three alternative measures of productivity, which are found to be highly correlated: labor productivity, value added per...

Bank credit to Egypt's private sector decreased over the last decade, despite a recapitalized banking system and high rates of economic growth. Recent macro-economic turmoil has reinforced the trend. This paper explains the decrease based on credit supply and demand considerations by 1)...

This paper describes stylized facts about internal migration and the labor force in Egypt, and shows how internal migration in the country is low compared with international standards. Using aggregate labor force survey data, the paper shows how individuals migrate to governorates with higher...

Ghana's economic growth picked up in the early 2000s and has been exceptionally strong over the past few years, with price booms of its main commodity exports, gold and cocoa, and the initiation of commercial oil production in 2011. This paper examines recent econometric evidence on Ghana's...