The Republic of Congo has seen dramatic improvement in its debt situation since 2010, following debt relief through the IMF and World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Countries/Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative. Large oil revenues have allowed the country to boost spending and increase foreign...

The paper tests a hypothesis suggested by Taylor (2000) that a low inflationary environment leads to a low exchange rate pass-through to domestic prices. To test this hypothesis, the paper derives a pass-through relation based on new open economy macroeconomic models. A large database that...

While the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) theorem has been a dominant paradigm in trade theory, the empirical evidence to support it has been weak. This paper develops a modified HOV model that allows technologies to differ across countries. The revised model significantly improves the theory’s...

This paper establishes that output volatility and the size of output drops have declined across all countries over the past three decades, but remain considerably higher in developing countries than in industrial countries. The paper employs a Bayesian latent dynamic factor model to decompose...

This paper examines the effects of intensified international competition on industry profits in six European Union (EU) countries. The paper uses two methods to estimate industry profits. The traditional method uses accounting data to obtain a measure of gross price-average cost margins. The...

The paper finds that exchange rate flexibility in emerging market countries has increased over the past decade. This ""learning to float"" appears to have involved a strengthening of monetary and financial policy frameworks aimed at directly addressing the key vulnerabilities that give rise to...

Research shows that international trade is an important channel for the transfer of technology. Building on this evidence, this paper examines the effects of inter- and intraindustry trade on technology transfer. The paper develops and tests the hypothesis that intraindustry trade stimulates...

This paper investigates the sensitivity of sectoral employment and wages in the United States to changes in foreign trade prices for 1980–90. Previous studies have concentrated mainly on the impact of changes in import prices on employment and wage levels. This paper estimates the impact of...

Remittance flows appear to be falling worldwide for the first time in decades as a result of the ongoing financial turmoil. It is suspected that the drop in remittance income into developing and emerging markets will have a destabilizing effect on these economies. The paper estimates the impact...

This paper analyzes the weak growth performance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region during 1980-2000 using an empirical model of long-run growth. The relative importance of the factors affecting growth is shown to vary across 16 MENA countries. In GCC countries, where oil revenues...