Recent theoretical literature has suggested a variety of mechanisms through which poverty may deter growth and become self-perpetuating. A few papers have searched for empirical regularities consistent with those mechanisms - such as aggregate non-convexities and convergence clubs. However, a...

This paper surveys the academic and policy debate on the roots of global imbalances, their role in the inception of the global crisis, and their prospects in its aftermath. The conventional view holds that global imbalances result primarily from unsustainably high demand for goods in the United...

This book presents the results of about three years of work finished in early 1992 in the area of private investment and macroeconomic adjustment. Its purpose is to explore the macroeconomic determinants of investment and the causes and cures for the gap between maroeconomic adjustment and...

Solvency is an intertemporal concept, relating to the present value of revenues and expenditures, and encompassing both assets and liabilities. But the standard practice among policy makers, financial market participants and international financial institutions is to assess the strength of the...

While fiscal adjustment is commonly viewed as the cornerstone of macroeconomic stabilization, the effectiveness of alternative fiscal instruments in raising national saving is still poorly understood. This paper enters the debate by estimating a private consumption function that allows for two...

The human, social and economic costs of Rwanda's Genocide have been staggering. Although the country has made remarkable progress over the last ten years, especially in terms of recovering some of the ground lost on education and health, GDP per capita remains much lower than what it would have...

This note puts figures behind the notion of poverty resulting from war. Using simulation models, the author estimates the economic and social costs of the El Salvadorian conflict. The calculations suggest that had conflict been avoided, income per capita would have been almost the double of its...

Latin America is together with Sub-Saharan Africa the most unequal region of the world. This paper documents recent inequality trends in the Latin American region, going beyond traditional measures of income inequality. The paper also reviews some of the explanations that have been put forward...

The author analyzes the stability of the empirical relationship between growth and changes in inequality over time. He concludes that while during the 1970s and 1980s the growth process was not accompanied by increases in inequality, during the 1990s a positive and significant correlation...

The human, social and economic costs of Rwanda`s genocide have been staggering. The losses in life cannot be reversed and the psychological impact of the violence will take a long time to heal. The country has made remarkable progress over the last 10 years to get back to where it would have...