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Unleashing Growth and Strengthening Resilience in the Caribbean
This book provides a diagnosis of the central economic and financial challenges facing Caribbean policymakers and offers broad policy recommendations for promoting a sustained and inclusive increase in economic well-being. The analysis highlights the need for Caribbean economies to make a concerted effort to break the feedback loops between weak macroeconomic fundamentals, notably pertaining to fiscal positions and financial sector strains, and structural impediments, such as high electricity costs, limited financial deepening, violent crime, and brain drain, which have depressed private investment and growth. A recurring theme in the book is the need for greater regional coordination in fin...
Excerpt: Unleashing Growth and Strengthening Resilience in the Caribbean
This book provides a diagnosis of the central economic and financial challenges facing Caribbean policymakers and offers broad policy recommendations for promoting a sustained and inclusive increase in economic well-being. The analysis highlights the need for Caribbean economies to make a concerted effort to break the feedback loops between weak macroeconomic fundamentals, notably pertaining to fiscal positions and financial sector strains, and structural impediments, such as high electricity costs, limited financial deepening, violent crime, and brain drain, which have depressed private investment and growth. A recurring theme in the book is the need for greater regional coordination in fin...
Trinidad and Tobago
This Selected Issues paper focuses on the impact of adjusting to commodity shocks in Trinidad and Tobago. With commodity resources being nonrenewable, developing a long-term strategy can help avoid unsustainable policies and ensure greater intergenerational equity. Recent country experiences highlight the benefits of precautionary buffers in smoothing fiscal adjustment process. Prudent and countercyclical fiscal policy implementation, structural reforms, and economic diversification can help contain the impact of commodity price booms and busts. Strong fiscal institutions are needed to help achieve and sustain the fiscal adjustment. Different adjustment strategies may be feasible depending on the needed size of the adjustment and country-specific circumstances. Trinidad and Tobago have faced several years of weak or negative growth on the back of terms-of-trade and energy supply shocks. A well-designed fiscal framework that considers potential uncertainties associated with commodity cycles can help improve fiscal management. Countercyclical policy implementation would help smooth the impact of commodity-induced sharp fluctuations in the economy.
Guyana
This 2019 Article IV Consultation highlights that Guyana’s economic growth strengthened in 2018 with broad-based expansion across all major sectors. The medium-term prospects are very favorable as oil production is on schedule to begin in early 2020. Economic growth is projected at 4.4 percent in 2019, extending the broad-based expansion across all major sectors. Policies to fortify the fiscal policy framework to ensure effective use of the new-found oil wealth; develop the necessary infrastructure for a suitable monetary policy framework that facilitates adjustment to oil price shocks while maintaining price stability; and reforms to enhance competitiveness, promote economic diversification, strengthen governance, and achieve inclusiveness. The passage of the Natural Resource Fund legislation is a critical step toward effective management of Guyana’s natural resource wealth. In order to ensure that fiscal discipline is maintained and spending ramps up at a pace in line with absorptive capacity, the fiscal framework should be enhanced to prevent deficits.
Barbados
The short-term recovery of the Barbados economy will critically depend on the rebound of demand for its services in its traditional markets. As a small tourist-dependent economy with a fixed exchange rate and volatile capital inflows, Barbados could shore up its external sector through fiscal consolidation and structural reforms to raise sustainable growth rates. Barbados’s financial system appears to have been broadly resilient up to now; preserving its soundness in an environment weakened by the recession requires strengthening the regulatory and supervisory framework.
Uruguay
This 2011 Article IV Consultation—Selected Issues paper focuses on estimating potential output and the output gap and spillovers from agriculture in the case of Uruguay. It introduces additional economic information and theory to estimate potential output, shedding some light on the discussion of current monetary and fiscal policies. The objective is to take advantage of economic data to disentangle the most recent economic performance by introducing multivariate techniques. The paper also presents an overview of the labor market and pension system of Uruguay.
Environmental Politics in the Middle East
Offers a critical and realistic reassessment of the threats posed to the environment in the Middle East, and what can be done about them.
Commodity Shocks and Exchange Rate Regimes: Implications for the Caribbean Commodity Exporters
Declining commodity prices during mid-2014-2016 posed significant challenges to commodity-exporting economies. The severe terms of trade shock associated with a sharp fall in world commodity prices have raised anew questions about the viability of pegged exchange rate regimes. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures needed to contain its spread have been associated with a significant disruption in several economic sectors, in particular, travel, tourism, and hospitality industry, adding to the downward pressure on commodity prices, a sharp fall in foreign exchange earnings, and depressed economic activity in most commodity exporters. This paper reviews country experiences with ...
Cultural Conflict in Hong Kong
This book examines how in navigating Hong Kong’s colonial history alongside its ever-present Chinese identity, the city has come to manifest a conflicting socio-cultural plurality. Drawing together scholars, critics, commentators, and creators on the vanguard of the emerging field of Hong Kong Studies, the essay volume presents a gyroscopic perspective that discerns what is made in from what is made into Hong Kong while weaving a patchwork of the territory’s contested local imaginary. This collection celebrates as it critiques the current state of Hong Kong society on the 20th anniversary of its handover to China. The gyroscopic outlook of the volume makes it a true area studies book-length treatment of Hong Kong, and a key and interdisciplinary read for students and scholars wishing to explore the territory’s complexities.
Fiscal Policy Multipliers in Small States
Government debt in many small states has risen beyond sustainable levels and some governments are considering fiscal consolidation. This paper estimates fiscal policy multipliers for small states using two distinct models: an empirical forecast error model with data from 23 small states across the world; and a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model calibrated to a hypothetical small state’s economy. The results suggest that fiscal policy using government current primary spending is ineffective, but using government investment is very potent in small states in affecting the level of their GDP over the medium term. These results are robust to different model specifications and characteristics of small states. Inability to affect GDP using current primary spending could be frustrating for policymakers when an expansionary policy is needed, but encouraging at the current juncture when many governments are considering fiscal consolidation. For the short term, however, multipliers for government current primary spending are larger and affected by imports as share of GDP, level of government debt, and position of the economy in the business cycle, among other factors.
