Oil wealth can be a political curse when oil-rich dictators oppose democratic development because they will have more to give up from losing power. In Africa, many of the poorest and most troubled states have, paradoxically, high levels of natural resource wealth. Most of these countries are oil...

For many developing countries including in Sub-Saharan Africa, international remittance flows represent a large and stable source of external finance. According to a recent World Bank report (Mohapatra and Ratha, 2011, Remittance Market in Africa) remittances sent by 31 million international...

Whether as consumers or producers, poor people across the world participate in markets. Making these markets more inclusive is a way to promote shared growth, lead to new and decent jobs, higher returns on goods traded, greater affordability of essential goods and services and reduced exposure to...

A real exchange rate that is broadly aligned with its equilibrium value is an important part of a country’s macroeconomic framework. Persistently misaligned real exchange rates can cause a misallocation of resources between tradable and non-tradable sectors and negatively impact labor market...

After decades of slow pace, Africa’s growth accelerated during 2000–12. Currently, the continent is one of the fastest growing in the world. Concomitant with the growth take-off were changes in net private capital inflows, especially FDI, and remittances: FDI and remittance inflows tripled during...

Against the backdrop of heightened uncertainty and anaemic growth following the financial crisis and the ongoing euro area sovereign debt crisis, expectations about the role that monetary should play in trying to stimulate growth have been raised. At the same time, the domestic economy has been...

International trade benefits the trade parties through exposing countries to the knowledge stocks of their trading partners (Grossman and Helpman 1991). This ‘learning by exporting’ effect may be important at both the country level and at the individual exporting firm level (Jim Love and al., 2010...

The recent global financial crisis has stimulated new interest among academics and policy makers in models aimed at providing alerts about the risk of the onset of a systemic banking crisis based on systematic theoretical and empirical analysis, the so-called early warning systems (EWSs). While...

Mobile payments technology is becoming increasingly significant, especially in the context of developing economies, where many low income households and microenterprises do not have ready access to financial services. Mobile payment facilitates financial inclusion, and offers potential for...