This working paper dealing with developing countries' external debt is at the origin of a written statement presented by the Centre Europe Tiers-Monde (CETIM) during the March 2007 4th session of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations Organization in Geneva (item 2 : implementation of...

Tax cuts create simultaneously a lack of tax receipts and more savings ready to be changed into public bonds and compensate this shortage of tax revenue. A part of tax resources is replaced by borrowing and those who are enjoying tax cuts are also receiving interest from government. The...

Recent talks claiming the necessity of austerity measures in France often take the unsustainibility of public debts as a starting point. In this analysis, we show that the current public debt levels in France are not a sufficient reason to undertake such austerity policies. To substantiate our...

In this paper, we analyze whether incoming foreign investment in China plays an important role in alleviating domestic firms' credit constraints. Access to external finance is a crucial determinant of business expansion. Using firm-level data on 2,200 domestic companies for the period 1999-2002,...

This article concerns the governance of the World Bank (WB) and tries to determine if it grants the decision-making power to Most Developed Countries (MDC) of the OECD. First of all, we demonstrate that these countries have effectively the decision-making power within three authorities of...

This article discusses the World Bank's formal rules of governance. It states that theoretically, each of the World Bank's member states is represented within the decision making process but in practice it is otherwise. Indeed, we demonstrate that in reality the democratic imbalance in favor of...

Thirty years after its implementation by the World Bank (WB) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the empirical evidences point out the very mixed results privatization has produced, particularly in the infrastructures sector. Despite of this, the WB has intensified its support to infrastructures...

We develop a political economy model that might explain the different environmental performance of countries, through educational choices. Individuals decide whether to invest in additional education according to their expectations regarding future environmental quality. They also vote on a tax...

Using a database of more than 1,100 firms in the MENA region, this article looks at the determinants of demand for trade credit, particularly access to bank credit, size, age and the quality of the firm's financial structure. We show that the difficulty of gaining acces to bank credit positively...

This paper contributes to the literature examining the role played by donors' interests within International Financial Institutions by showing how the G7 and G10 countries manage to influence World Bank (WB) decisions to satisfy their interests. It demonstrates that the G7 and G10 meets the two...