The Unassuming Economist

A new IMF Regional Economic Outlook on Sub-Saharan Africa says that “The informal economy is a key component of most economies in sub-Saharan Africa, contributing between 25 and 65 percent of GDP and accounting for between 30 and 90 percent of total nonagricultural employment. While international experience indicates that the share of the informal economy declines as the level of development increases, most economies in sub-Saharan Africa are likely to have large informal sectors for many years to come, presenting both opportunities and challenges for policymakers.”

My talk to the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF: still trying to make the case to parliamentarians that unemployment and job creation often have as much to do with central banks and finance ministries as with labor and education ministries.

An IMF report says “The level of corruption in Ukraine is exceptionally high. This can severely undermine economic growth prospects, in particular by hindering private investment. Reducing corruption is therefore essential to speed up the process of economic convergence to the rest of Europe. Regional comparisons help identifying best practices in reducing corruption. The Ukrainian authorities have recently adopted important measures that follow some of these best practices. They are, however, facing a number of specific challenges, including the concentration of political and economic powers in a small group of people which may hamper effective anti-corruption efforts.”

Continue reading here.

A partial summary of the IMF’s work on inclusive growth (partial to my work).

Build a new data set and the users will come. At least that’s what my co-authors and I hope will be the case with this new data set on services exports that we released yesterday. More to come on this topic in coming days.