This paper examines the welfare implications of trade reforms in the presence of a government budget constraint. There is consensus about gains from opening up to trade. The less investigated question is, whether a coordinated tax reform, where the tariff revenue cuts are compensated with...

This paper develops a proxy measure of the inequality of influence on the basis of survey evidence from 2002 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) conducted among 6,500 firms in 27 transition countries. We refer to the resulting inequality as crony bias in the political...

The Commission was asked to evaluate current assistance arrangements to the TCF industries and provide policy options for post 2005 assistance and to report on a range of related matters that will affect the sector's long-term viability. The inquiry will also look at relevant workplace issues...

Rules of origin arrangements under the Australia–New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement (CER) were referred to the Commission for examination and report by May 2004. The request stemmed from concerns that Australian and New Zealand firms were having difficulty achieving the...

The objective of the paper is to answer an often-asked question : if tariff rates are reduced, what will happen to wage inequality ? We consider two types of wage inequality : between occupations (skills premium), and between industries. We use two large data bases of wage inequality that have...

Thanks to Nitsan Chorev, Robert Connolly, David Leblang, Quan Li, Andy Mertha, Layna Mosley, Bumba Mukherjee, Eric Reinhardt, Peter Rosendorff, Matthew Slaughter, Andy Sobel, participants of the 2004 Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting and the 2004 Duke Summer Institute on...