The demise of the CMEA trading system in 1991 and the shift to convertible currency settlements and world market prices was expected to bring about a severe contraction of intra-group trade, coupled with large imbalances in trade between Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The observed...

Many countries have failed to use natural resource wealth to promote growth and development. They have been damaged by volatility of revenues, have failed to save a sufficiently high proportion of their resource revenues and failed to make high return investments to support diversification of...

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...

In this Paper we focus on the question: Will the HIPC debt reduction program help in the transformation of the development assistance business and change the rules of the ‘debt game’ in Africa? We concentrate on the donor and official creditor side, by exploring how the growing debt of...

A windfall of foreign aid or natural resource revenue faces government with choices of how to manage public borrowing, public asset accumulation, and the distribution of funds to households (across time and household types), particularly when the windfall is both anticipated and temporary. These...

This paper provides a description of the economic growth process and its major characteristics in the Netherlands from the 1930s up to the present. The first part presents some main characteristics of the long-run growth performance of the Dutch economy. It is shown that the Netherlands has...

This paper analyzes some of the consequences of economic and monetary union of the two Germanies. Particular emphasis is given to the real implications for the supply side of the German Democratic Republic and for resource flows between two economic regions.

This Paper analyses the growth and employment effects of the 1994-99 Community Support Framework (CSF) for the Objective 1 Spanish regions, using a simple supply-side model estimated with a panel of regional data. The results suggest that the impact of the Structural Funds in Spain has been...

Following the rationale for regional redistribution programmes described in the official documents of the European Union, this Paper studies a very simple multi-country model built around two regions: a core and a periphery. Technological spillovers link firms’ productivity in each of the two...

Taking both the enlargement process, as currently defined by the EU, and the structural funds as a given, this Paper examines what is the best way for candidate countries to fuel real convergence. The experience from earlier EU enlargements and current economic conditions within the CEEC10...