Countries vary widely with respect to the share of government spending on health, a metric that can serve as a proxy for the extent to which health is prioritized by governments. World Health Organization (WHO) data estimate that, in 2011, health's share of aggregate government expenditure in...

The main purpose of this work is to develop a case study assessing the recent patterns and impacts of ODA (official development assistance) and DAH (development assistance for health) to Liberia on overall government spending and domestic revenue generation as well as domestic government health...

Empirical studies on new growth theory have tended to ignore financial policy's role in development. The author provides evidence that the initial level of financial development is positively associated with a country's later GDP growth rate, after controlling for the effect of the starting...

The author evaluates the effectiveness of policy measures adopted by Chile and Colombia, aiming to mitigate the deleterious effects of pro-cyclical capital flows. In the case of Chile, according to his Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) analysis, capital controls succeeded in reducing net...

In parallel (dual) foreign-exchange markets - extremely common in developing countries - a market-determined exchange rate coexists with one or more pegged exchange rates. The authors report the main lessons from a World Bank research project on how these systems work, based mainly on case...

The authors examine the effect of volatility on the costs and benefits of financial market integration. The authors use a basic framework that combines the costly state verification model and the contract enforceability approach. They assess the welfare effects of financial market integration by...

This paper explores the theoretical underpinnings and empirical relevance to public finance of financial repression - of controls on international capital flows and on domestic financial intermediaries. It concludes, in principle, countries should not resort to financial repression when they...

This paper argues that the dominant policy paradigm on financial development is increasingly insufficient to address big emerging issues that are particularly relevant for financial systems in Latin America. This paradigm was shaped over the past decades by a fundamental shift in thinking toward...

The authors present a simulation model (applied here to Uruguay and implemented in Javelin) that permits analysis of the interaction between a financial system and the economic environment in which it operates. The model allows the user to compute and project the indicators necessary to monitor...

The sharp drop in private savings in the 1990s in Colombia can be attributed to a decline in private disposable income and, to a lesser extent, to growth in consumption. The permanent decline in private disposable income in Colombia between 1950 and 990 is closely linked to tax increases. This...