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This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. This paper examines the impact of a monetary policy shock on output, prices, and the nominal effective exchange rate for Kenya using data during 1997-2005. Based on techniques commonly used in the vector autoregression literature, the main results suggest that an exogenous increase in the short-term interest rate tends to be followed by a decline in prices and appreciation in the nominal exchange rate, but has insignificant impact on output. Moreover, the paper finds that variations in the short-term interest rate account for significant fluctuations in the nominal exchange rate and prices, while accounting little for output fluctuations.

Using three distinct approaches-statistical filtering, production function, and multivariate model-this paper estimates potential growth for China, India, and five ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) during 1993-2013. The main findings include: (i) both China and India have recently exhibited a slowdown in potential growth, largely reflecting a decline of total factor productivity (TFP) growth; (ii) by contrast, trend growth for the five ASEAN countries has been rather stable and might even have increased marginally, with the notable exception of Vietnam;(iii) over the longer term, demographic factors will be much more supportive in India and some ASEAN economies than in China, where working-age population should start shrinking, with the overall dependency ratio climbing by the end of this decade. Improving or sustaining potential growth calls for broad structural reforms.

Against the backdrop of the rise of global value chains (GVCs), particularly in Asia, this paper documents key developments of GVCs and investigates what factors cause economies to reap greater benefits from GVC participation. Key findings include: first, moving toward a more upstream position in production and raising economic complexity are associated with the country increasing its share of GVC value added. Second, fostering GVC participation and expanding the share of the domestic value added in a value chain require efforts to reduce trade barriers, enhance infrastructure, foster human capital formation, support research and development, and improve institutions.