Consumption in China is unusually low and has continued to decline as a share of GDP over the past decade. A key policy question is how to reverse this trend, and rebalance growth away from reliance on exports and investment and toward consumption. This paper investigates whether the sizable increase in government social spending in recent years lowered precautiona...

Consumption in China is unusually low and has continued to decline as a share of GDP over the past decade. A key policy question is how to reverse this trend, and rebalance growth away from reliance on exports and investment and toward consumption. This paper investigates whether the sizable increase in government social spending in recent years lowered precautiona...

Consumption in China is unusually low and has continued to decline as a share of GDP over the past decade. A key policy question is how to reverse this trend, and rebalance growth away from reliance on exports and investment and toward consumption. This paper investigates whether the sizable increase in government social spending in recent years lowered precautiona...

This paper gauges the key determinants of China's private consumption in relation to GDP using data on the Chinese economy and evidence from other countries' experiences. The results suggest there is nothing "special" about consumption in China. Rather, the challenge is to explain why the conditioning variables-notably a low level of service sector employment, the ...

This paper gauges the key determinants of China's private consumption in relation to GDP using data on the Chinese economy and evidence from other countries' experiences. The results suggest there is nothing "special" about consumption in China. Rather, the challenge is to explain why the conditioning variables-notably a low level of service sector employment, the ...

This paper gauges the key determinants of China's private consumption in relation to GDP using data on the Chinese economy and evidence from other countries' experiences. The results suggest there is nothing "special" about consumption in China. Rather, the challenge is to explain why the conditioning variables-notably a low level of service sector employment, the ...

Countries receiving debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative will be among the first to benefit from the new World Bank -- International Monetary Fund approach to strengthening the impact on poverty of concessional assistance in low-income countries. The new approach features a more inclusive and participatory process for helping recipient c...

The Arab Republic of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and the Republic of Yemen are recovering after a period of economic growth decelerations accompanying the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. Economic recovery was relatively quick, with industrial production recovering in a matter of months and, in the cases of Egypt and Tunisia, the growth dips of 2011 were smaller than the a...