The paper presents a theoretical model to explain how debt overhang is generated in low-income countries and discusses its implications for debt relief. The paper indicates that the extent of debt overhang, and the effectiveness of debt relief, would depend on a recipient country's initial...

Cameroon showed incipient signs of recovery from the global financial crisis. Although growth performance remained constrained under the Poverty Reduction Growth Facility (PRGF), tax and customs administrations were strengthened, macroeconomic stability was preserved, and debt relief under the...

This paper discusses key findings of the First Review Under the Stand-By Arrangement for Angola. The paper reveals that the authorities’ reforms are beginning to bear fruit in terms of achieving key program goals. The heavy foreign exchange market pressures that were evident at the...

Consumer price indexes (CPIs) are compiled at the higher (weighted) level using Laspeyres-type arithmetic averages. This paper questions the suitability of such formulas and considers two counterpart alternatives that use geometric averaging, the Geometric Young and the (price-updated) Geometric...

The benefits from financial development are known to vary across industries. However, no systematic effort has been made to determine the technological characteristics that are shared by industries that tend to grow relatively faster in more financially developed countries. This paper explores a...

The recent development literature stresses that countries that receive large revenues from natural resource endowments typically raise less revenue from domestic taxation, and that this creates governance problems because the lower domestic tax effort reduces the incentive for the public...

This paper examines possible segmentation of the internal capital market in China. We employ two standard tools from the international finance literature to analyze financial integration across Chinese provinces. Both tests confirm a similar (and somewhat surprising) picture: capital mobility...

Bulgaria's macroeconomic performance in the face of the prolonged slowdown in the EU has been impressive, but risks have intensified. The response of fiscal policy to these risks has been adequate. Plans to increase reliance on state enterprises to carry out public sector activities are...

This paper focuses on Tajikistan’s Sixth Review Under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF). The program for 2005 has been implemented satisfactorily. All quantitative and structural performance criteria and indicative targets for end-September 2005 were observed, and all...