Many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have recently experienced surges in money growth that apparently have not generated significant inflationary pressures. Moreover, several MENA countries have followed monetary policy rules that according to standard monetary theory...

In this paper we discuss fiscal and monetary policy issues facing heavily-indebted poor countries (HIPCs) who receive debt reduction via the enhanced HIPC initiative. This debt relief program is distinguished from previous ones by its conditionality: freed resources must be used for poverty...

A bilateral search model of the commodity market is formulated to study the effects of liberalizing prices in a reforming socialist economy. The main result is that if the competitive structure of the economy is not quickly modified to eliminate supply rents, price liberalization may be...

In this paper we discuss monetary and fiscal policy issues facing heavily-indebted poor countries (HIPCs) who receive debt reduction via the enhanced HIPC initiative. This debt relief program is distinguished from previous ones by its conditionality: freed resources must be used for poverty...

This paper assembles a set of relevant fiscal data, for both the individual countries and for the aggregate G-7 and 18 industrial countries, which covers a period long enough to allow an assessment of trends and the conduct of econometric tests. The “world” fiscal deficit has been rising...

In this paper we discuss fiscal and monetary policy issues facing heavily-indebted poor countries (HIPCs) who receive debt reduction via the enhanced HIPC initiative. This debt relief program is distinguished from previous ones by its conditionality: freed resources must be used for poverty...

This paper applies a search matching model with firing restrictions to examine whether the existence of firing restrictions affects the outcome of the matching process and the natural rate of unemployment in Tunisia. The paper concludes that the removal of firing restrictions is likely to...

In this study, we analyse extended periods of growth in Africa based on panel estimations from 27 African countries during the 1960-1996 period. Only a dozen of such rapid growth episodes are observable in Africa since 1960, and several of them eventually came to an end. We use all existing...