The 1980s have seen the beginnings of a change of heart among developing country policymakers, as the import-substitution consensus of the previous decade has all but evaporated. It is paradoxical that the 1980s should have become the decade of trade liberalization in LDCs, since this has also...

In this paper we show that the delegation of monetary policy to an independent and more conservative central banker is an optimal policy in an international context with monetary spillovers between countries, even in the absence of time inconsistency (credibility) issues. We also study the...

This Paper analyses what actions could be taken in the context of the WTO Doha negotiations to assist countries to benefit from deeper trade integration. It discusses the policy agenda that confronts many developing countries and identifies a number of focal points that could be used both as...

Is social capital long lasting? Does it affect long term economic performance? To answer these questions we test Putnam’s conjecture that today marked differences in social capital between the North and South of Italy were due to the culture of independence fostered by the free city-states...

The two central economic problems facing Hungary are its large foreign debt and its relatively poor rate of growth over the 1980s. The paper examines some of the reform issues facing Hungary, starting with the tax reforms of 1988 and 1989, but concentrating on the importance of creating...

There is a tremendous diversity in the level and time-series pattern of the self-employment rate across countries. After documenting this fact with cross-section and time-series data on industrialized and lesser-developed countries, this paper presents and tests a series of hypotheses concerning...

This paper analyzes the dynamic interaction between norms - internalized restraints on opportunistic behaviour - and institutions - restraints on such behaviour deriving from external enforcement. When individuals following a norm suffer pecuniary losses to doing so, the norm is eroded....

The focus of policy reform in developing countries has moved from getting prices right to getting institutions right, and accordingly countries are increasingly being advised to move towards "best-practice" institutions. This paper argues that appropriate institutions for developing countries...

Since the mid 1980s a substantial amount of research has been undertaken on trade in services. Much of this is inspired by the WTO or regional trade agreements, especially the EU, but an increasing number of papers focus on the impacts of services sector liberalization. This paper surveys the...

Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...