Author/Editor: Harald Finger, Daniela Gressani.

Release Date: April, 2014

The changing political landscape in the Arab world has created opportunities for economic transformation by tackling long-standing economic issues. Nevertheless, three years after the onset of more...

Author/Editor: Paulo Drummond, Estelle X Liu.

Release Date: December, 2013

The rapid growth in China’s domestic investment in recent decades has generated a large appetite for global goods, including from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This paper estimates the impact of more...

Author/Editor: Anoop Singh, Malhar S Nabar, Papa M N'Diaye.

Release Date: November, 2013

China's current account surplus has declined to around one-quarter the peak reached before the global financial crisis. While this is a major reduction in China's external imbalance, it has not been more...

Author/Editor: Alexander Klemm.

Release Date: October, 2013

Current account deficits imply increasing liabilities to the rest of the world. External sustainability then depends on whether these can be met in the future without defaulting, i.e., normally more...

Author/Editor: Il Houng Lee, Murtaza H Syed, Liu Xueyan.

Release Date: March, 2013

This paper proposes a possible framework for identifying excessive investment. Based on this method, it finds evidence that some types of investment are becoming excessive in China, particularly in more...

Author/Editor: Dulani Seneviratne, Yan Sun.

Release Date: February, 2013

Adequate infrastructure has long been viewed as an important factor in economic development. Based on regressions covering 76 advanced and emerging market economies, this paper estimates the impact more...

Author/Editor: Il Houng Lee, Murtaza H Syed, Liu Xueyan.

Release Date: November, 2012

Now close to 50 percent of GDP, this paper assesses the appropriateness of China’s current investment levels. It finds that China’s capital-to-output ratio is within the range of other emerging more...

Author/Editor: Ashvin Ahuja, Malhar Nabar.

Release Date: November, 2012

Over the past decade, China’s growth model has become more reliant on investment and its footprint in global imports has widened substantially. Several economies within China’s supply chain are more...

Author/Editor: Ashvin Ahuja, Alla Myrvoda.

Release Date: November, 2012

Real estate investment accounts for a quarter of total fixed asset investment (FAI) in China. The real estate sector’s extensive industrial and financial linkages make it a special type of economic more...

Author/Editor: Emine Boz, Ceyhun Bora Durdu, Nan Li.

Release Date: October, 2012

Emerging economies are characterized by higher consumption and real wage variability relative to output and a strongly countercyclical current account. A real business cycle model of a small open more...

Author/Editor: Christopher Carroll, Martin Sommer, Jiri Slacalek.

Release Date: September, 2012

We argue that the U.S. personal saving rate’s long stability (from the 1960s through the early 1980s), subsequent steady decline (1980s - 2007), and recent substantial increase (2008 - 2011) more...

Author/Editor: Joonkyu Park.

Release Date: September, 2012

Capital market development in Brazil is a key policy issue going forward to foster savings, investment and absorptive capacity in a context of prospects for sizable capital flows in the medium term. more...

Author/Editor: Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Lorenz Kueng, John Silvia.

Release Date: August, 2012

We study the effects and historical contribution of monetary policy shocks to consumption and income inequality in the United States since 1980. Contractionary monetary policy actions systematically more...

Author/Editor: Jaromir Benes, Michael Kumhof.

Release Date: August, 2012

At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary more...

Author/Editor: Kurt Annen, Luc Moers.

Release Date: August, 2012

This paper shows that donors that maximize relative aid impact spread their budgets across many recipient countries in a unique Nash equilibrium, explaining aid fragmentation. This equilibrium may be more...

Author/Editor: Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Gee Hee Hong.

Release Date: August, 2012

We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes and average prices paid by consumers (effective prices) in a dataset containing prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers more...

Author/Editor: Jacob Gyntelberg, Mico Loretan, Subhanij Tientip.

Release Date: August, 2012

We present empirical evidence that the Thai baht’s value is driven in part by investors’ cross-border equity portfolio rebalancing decisions. Our results are based on comprehensive more...

Author/Editor: Deniz Igan, Prakash Loungani.

Release Date: August, 2012

Housing cycles and their impact on the financial system and the macroeconomy have become the center of attention following the global financial crisis. This paper documents the characteristics of more...

Release Date: July, 2012

Author/Editor: Jiri Jonas.

Release Date: July, 2012

The paper discusses the fiscal impact of the Great Recession of 2007-08 on state and local governments in the United States. It documents the sharp decline in tax revenue and discusses how states more...