The paper aims to enhance the existing literature on the debt-growth nexus by analysing the relationship in two separate country groups using the extreme bounds analysis for sensitivity tests and the mixed, fixed, and random coefficient approach that allows for heterogeneity in the causal...

This paper examines whether terms of trade shocks have an asymmetric effect on private savings in transition economies.A simple three-period framework is developed to show that, in the presence of binding credit constraints in bad states of nature, savings rates can be sensitive to favorable...

Financial development is vulnerable to social conflict. Conflict reduces the demand for domestic currency as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Conflict also leads to poor quality governance, including weak regulation of the financial system, thereby undermining the sustainability of...

The world lottery market now amounts to at least US$126 billion in sales. World market sales for all gaming products (public, charitable and commercial) total some US$1 trillion, of which Internet gambling accounts for US$32 billion. This paper assesses the prospects for harnessing this large...

Over the course of the last decade, Bangladesh has implemented a broad-based program of financial and market reforms, encompassing changes in the structure of the financial system, prudential and supervisory frameworks, and monetary management. This paper estimates a savings function to evaluate...

We study whether financial openness facilitates the economic integration of formerly centrally planned economies with the EU-15. Two dimensions of economic integration are considered: cross-country convergence of per-capita incomes and bilateral trade in goods and services. We find that more...

This paper seeks to fill a gap in the literature by analyzing inflation in Poland, one of only two transition economies that have adopted a strict inflation-targeting policy.The paper also introduces a new method for selecting inflation indicators. Consistent with the earlier literature,...

Recent studies suggest that the allocation of expenditures in education matters for growth. Public education spending in many transition economies, however, is often inefficient and inequitable with education outlays misallocated across sectors. This highlights the need for an assessment of the...

The paper examines the causal relationship between FDI and economic growth by using an innovative econometric methodology to study the direction of causality between the two variables. We apply our methodology, based on the Toda-Yamamoto test for causality, to time-series data covering the...