State-owned enterprises (SOEs) continue to constrain Pacific economies. They absorb scarce capital, suffer low productivity, and often provide high cost and low quality services. SOE reform is vital to create private investment opportunities, reduce the costs of doing business, and improve...

This paper analyses the effects of reducing unfunded social security and population ageing on economic growth and welfare, both for a small open economy and for a closed economy.The economy consists of a service sector and a commodity sector.Productivity growth only occurs in the latter sector...

This analysis is a follow-up to Transforming Tonga: A Private Sector Assessment. It assesses until early 2012 in reducing transaction costs and other barriers to growth identified in the 2008 private sector assessment. It concludes that Tonga has been one of the leading reformers in the Pacific...

This paper analyses the effects of reducing unfunded social security in a closed economy that consists of a service sector and a commodity sector.It is shown that if old agents mainly demand labour intensive services, a modest decrease of the pay-as-you-go pension scheme still raises long-run...

This paper explores the use of auctions for privatizing public assets.In our model, a single "insider" bidder (e.g. incumbent management of a government-owned firm) possesses information about the asset's risky value.In addition, bidders are privately informed about their costs of exploiting the...

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) play a significant role in the economy of Papua New Guinea (PNG), as they do in other Pacific countries. They provide a range of essential services, most notably power, water, telecommunications, and transport that are vital to commerce and to the livelihoods of...