The Unassuming Economist

A new IMF working paper “reviews Djibouti’s macroeconomic reforms aimed at achieving middle-income status as envisaged in Vision Djibouti 2035, the authorities’ development strategy. In this context, the paper reviews policy options available to the authorities in three critical reform areas: translating the investment boom into strong and inclusive growth to reduce poverty and unemployment; fiscal policy to support growth while preserving debt sustainability; and the important role of the business climate in growth acceleration.”

A new World Bank  independent evaluation report finds that “the World Bank has made a significant effort to incorporate the shared prosperity goal—since its introduction in 2013–into its various products and services, across regions, global practices and World Bank Group institutions. In addition to the World Bank Group’s first goal of poverty reduction, shared prosperity goal is defined as the growth of real incomes of the bottom 40 percent. Lessons from the evaluation of early implementation of the goal and the World Bank Group’s related, equity oriented operations pre-2013 period, however, suggest that an increased focus on distributional issues in the World Bank’s lending projects does not automatically lead to improved development outcomes.”

From VoxEU: “The Eurozone crisis has opened fault lines between German economists and policymakers and those in a number of Eurozone (in particular periphery) countries.This column introduces a new eBook explaining the historical development of the ordoliberal school of economics and its influence on German policymaking, and contrasting it critically with what we like to call the Anglo-Saxon-Latin pragmatism of economic policymaking.”

Download the new eBook here.

From a new IMF working paper:

“Korea is facing mounting economic challenges. Productivity growth has been on a trend decline amid demographic headwinds, while the societal demand for inclusive growth has been on a steep rise. Furthermore, the government-led unbalanced growth model—which served Korea well in the past—has become less effective and politically palatable in recent years. As such, Korea needs a major paradigm shift to embark on a new sustainable and inclusive growth path. But policy response has been modest at best with no major reforms being implemented over the past two decades. We propose a paradigm shift in Korea’s economic framework, involving a simultaneous big push for greater economic freedom and stronger social protection within the parameters set by long-run fiscal sustainability. We also provide a detailed account of structural reforms to boost economic freedom and sustainable funding plans for stronger social protection.”

A new IMF country report finds:

“The implementation of the Pacto por México has already led to important transformations in the Mexican economy. While initial estimates of potential growth payoffs may have been optimistic, external headwinds have masked important signals that the reforms are working. From a macroeconomic perspective, the reforms have already contributed to increasing investment, falling prices and more widespread access to services.

The reforms will take more time to fully feed through to the broader macro economy and lift growth. The delayed impact of the reforms owes to their complexity as well as some important short-term costs. At the same time, weaknesses in the rule of law will have weakened their impacts. Nevertheless, the transformations have highlighted the positive synergies associated with a broad approach to structural reform that exploits complementarities between different sectors.

Building on existing reforms will be key, and priority should be given to reforms targeting the rule of law. Continued weaknesses related to informality, corruption and crime would stifle private investment and would likely impede the broader reform effort from exerting its full impact on the economy. Improving the efficiency and quality of law enforcement and judicial institutions would be critical in this regard.”