The construction of large dams is one of the most costly and controversial forms of public infrastructure investment in developing countries, but little is known about their impact. This paper studies the productivity and distributional effects of large dams in India. To account for endogenous...

This paper investigates whether the effects, on registered manufacturing output, employment, entry and investment, of dismantling the 'license raj' - a system of central controls regulating entry and production activity in this sector - vary across Indian states with different labour market...

This paper looks at the economic impact of secession through the lens of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. It uses an econometric analysis covering the period between 1956 and 2011 – including a series of factors linked to the independence process, socioeconomic and structural...

The Doha multilateral round of trade negotiations sponsored by the WTO has been dragging on for over a decade, with no end in sight. In this short paper we assess empirically what determines the duration of trade negotiations, focusing on the span between the start of trade talks and their...

We investigate the effects of short-term political motivations on the effectiveness of foreign aid. Donor countries’ political motives might reduce the effectiveness of conditionality, channel aid to inferior projects, reduce the aid bureaucracy’s effort, and change the power structure in...

We study the relationship between participation in free trade agreements (FTAs) and the sustainability of democracy. Our model shows that FTAs can critically reduce the incentive of authoritarian groups to seek power by destroying protectionist rents, thus making democracies last longer. This...

Several factors potentially responsible for the failure to conclude the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations are analysed. A two-stage negotiation and ratification game between the “North” (industrialised countries) and the “South” (developing countries) is employed and...

The Agreement on Trade Facilitation (TFA) embodies the first set of new multilateral rules to have been negotiated under auspices of the WTO, part of a small package of decisions centering on matters of interest to developing countries that was “harvested” from the broader Doha round. This...

Although the global economy has begun to recover from the 2008-2011 financial crisis, challenges to the world trading system have increased. Several trends are taking public policies further away from the core WTO disciplines of non-discrimination, namely MFN and national treatment. This has...

This paper provides an account of the resort in recent years by governments in the Asia Pacific region to discrimination against foreign commercial interests. As in previous systemic economic crises, policymakers altered the mix of discriminatory policies employed. This time around governments...