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The Arab Spring holds the promise of improved living standards and a more prosperous future for the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa region. At the same time, the region is witnessing uncertainty and economic pressures from domestic and external sources, which will likely be exacerbated by the recent worsening of the global economy. The main challenge in the short term will be to manage expectations while maintaining economic stability. To that end, better-targeted subsidies and transfers will help free up resources for investment in infrastructure, education, and health. Policies aimed at fostering inclusive growth will also help cement the longer-term benefits of the ongoing changes in the region. In the Caucasus and Central Asia, the economic outlook is broadly positive. Exports and remittances--key growth drivers in 2010--are continuing to grow solidly, helping the recovery gain firm momentum. At the same time, uncertainties over the robustness of the global recovery constitute a downside risk to the growth outlook. Key challenges facing the region over the medium term are to create jobs and foster high and inclusive growth.

This paper examines the structural competitiveness of oil-rich economies in sub-Saharan Africa relative to other major oil-exporting developing countries, and investigates reasons for systematic differences in the non-oil export performance across these economies. The analysis reveals that oil-rich Africa lags behind other oil-exporters in terms of diversification, global market share and the overall investment climate. The poor performance of their nonoil sector can be largely attributed to weak infrastructure and institutional quality. The results also show that institutional quality is a significant determinant of the extent to which oil abundance affects the competitiveness of the non-oil sector; thereby explaining the divergent experiences of oil-rich economies across the world. This implies that oil wealth does not necessarily weaken the non-oil tradable sector; countries may mitigate the impact of Dutch disease and benefit from oil booms if revenues are used prudently to reduce oil dependence.

Based on panel data covering 114 countries between 1996 and 2011, this study investigates the impact on pollution of trade in environmental goods (EGs). We check the validity of the implicit consequences assumed by the win–win scenario in the current trade-climate negotiations, arguing that market dynamics should guarantee that EGs’ liberalization is ‘automatically’ in the interest of all countries, regardless their market and institutional capacities. We show that trade in EGs alone fail to address environmental problems effectively. In particular, although we found efficiency gains from trade in EGs (in terms of CO2 and SO2 emissions per 1 US$ of GDP), and more recurrently for net exporters than for net importers, our results often failed to highlight environmental effectiveness (in terms of total CO2 and SO2 emissions). A general conclusion that emerges from our empirical results is that trade [in EGs] cannot effectively replace non-market-based solutions, when it comes to non-trade objectives. However, it seems to complement them efficiently. Our multiple-equation GMM estimations reveal specific direct, indirect and total effects on pollution depending on the countries’ net trade status, leading to several policy recommendations for an increased environmental effectiveness of trade in EGs.

This paper extends Grossman and Helpman's seminal work (1991), and presents an endogenous growth model where innovations created in a high-tech sector may be assimilated or adapted by a low-tech sector. Applying a simple Heckscher-Ohlin framework, the effects of technological diffusion are found to allow a country relatively scarce in human capital to benefit from nondecreasing rates of growth through its low-tech sector. The model is tested by using a dynamic panel data approach (Arellano and Bover, 1995). Results are consistent with the predictions of the model and robust to a broad range of definitions of technological intensity.

Building on Kilian and Park's (2009) structural VAR analysis of the effects of oil demand and supply shocks on the U.S. stock market, this paper focuses on the differences and commonalities of stock price responses in oil exporting and importing economies in 1974–2011. Structural oil price shocks add to our understanding of the 2008 stock market crash. I find that unexpected reductions in world oil supply do not affect stock returns in any of six OECD countries. Although an increase in global aggregate demand consistently raises oil prices and cumulative real stock returns, the effect is more persistent for oil exporters. Other, e.g., precautionary oil demand shocks have a detrimental impact on stock markets in oil-importing countries, a statistically insignificant effect for Canada, and a significantly positive effect for Norway. Oil price shocks account for a larger share of the variation in aggregate international stock returns than in national stock returns.

This paper develops a structural macroeconometric model of the world economy, disaggregated into thirty five national economies. This panel unobserved components model features a monetary transmission mechanism, a fiscal transmission mechanism, and extensive macrofinancial linkages, both within and across economies. A variety of monetary policy analysis, fiscal policy analysis, spillover analysis, and forecasting applications of the estimated model are demonstrated, based on a Bayesian framework for conditioning on judgment.

The economic successes of China and India are viewed with admiration but also with concern because of the effects that the growth of these Asian economies may have on the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. The evidence in 'China's and India's Challenge to Latin America' indicates that certain manufacturing and service industries in some countries have been negatively affected by Chinese and Indian competition in third markets and that LAC imports from China and India have been associated with modest unemployment and adjustment costs in manufacturing industries. The book also provides substantial evidence of positive aggregate effects for LAC economies associated with China's and India's greater presence in world exports, financial flows, and innovation. Chinese and Indian growth is creating new production possibilities for LAC economies, particularly in sectors that rely on natural resources and scientific knowledge.