The West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) regional securities market saw increasing activity in the last decade, but still fell short of supplying sufficient long-term financing for ...growth-enhancing public and private investment projects. In addition to providing an institutional background, this paper studies recent developments and the determinants of interest rates on the market-using yield curve and principal component analyses. It also identifies challenges and prospective reforms that could help the region reap the full benefits of a more dynamic securities market and assesses the potential systemic risk the market may pose for the region's banking system.
This paper analyzes the process of Internet diffusion across the world using a panel of 214 countries during the period 1990–2004. Countries are classified as low- or high-income and it is shown that ...the diffusion process is characterized by a different S-shaped curve in each group. The estimated diffusion curves provide evidence of very slow “catching up”. The paper also explores the determinants of Internet diffusion and shows that network effects are crucial to explain this process. One important finding is that the degree of competition in the provision of the Internet contributes positively to its diffusion.
This paper investigates how consumer price inflation is determined in Mali for 1979-2006 along three macroeconomic explanations: (1) monetarist theories, emphasizing the impact of excess money ...supply, (2) the structuralist hypothesis, stressing the impact of supply-side constraints, and (3) external theories, describing the effects of foreign transmission mechanisms on a small open economy. The analysis makes use of cointegration techniques and general-to-specific modeling. Average national rainfall, and to a lesser extent deviations from monetary and external sector equilibrium are found to be the main long-run determinants of inflation. The paper offers policy recommendations for controlling inflation in Mali.
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