The authors analyze whether political freedom and civil liberties help or hinder economic liberalization, using panel data from 25 post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union between 1992 and 1997. Building on arguments and counter-arguments put forth in...

What, if any, is the link between labor market policies that benefit insiders - for example, regulations guaranteeing high minimum wages and strict job security - and political regimes. Is it true that in a democracy outsiders vote and impose limits on what insiders can achieve, whereas in a...

To control the expansion of government contingent liabilities and reduce fiscal vulnerability, one must be able to identify and measure them. The authors discuss how this may be done and demonstrate how the assessment of fiscal adjustment may change substantially when a broader picture of...

Cote d'Ivoire represents an ideal opportunity for a case study of the effects of fiscal policy in a developing country with a fixed exchange rate. For the last 15 years, the growth of the Ivorian economy has been dramatically affected by both exogenous factors and the responses of fiscal policy....

The authors examine the impact of public infrastructure on private capital formation in three countries of the Middle East and North Africa-Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. They highlight various channels through which public infrastructure may affect private investment. Then they describe their...

Transferring ownership and control of enterprises from the public to the private sector has recently attracted great interest around the world. Several developed and developing countries have already divested varying portions of their public enterprise (PE) sectors, and many others are planning...

Public enterprises (PEs) earn an average 10 percent of GDP in developing countries. Many governments are reexamining the role of the state, so questions about whether to divest PEs or make them more efficient are likely to intensify. The Bank will increasingly be called upon for advice and...

Over six decades, Chile experimented with three regulatory regimes and ownership patterns for its telecommunications sectors, each with radically different investment patterns. Until 1970, Chile relied on private ownership and rate-of-return regulation, but excess demand persisted. In the 1970s,...

In response to the recent wave ofprivatizing and regulating monopolies in developing countries, the authors evaluate the impact of different regulatory schemes on private sector behavior in the telecommunications sector in seven countries. They find that regulation is most effective - meaning,...

Land and real estate reforms have not been effective at achieving their objectives, in part because of how they have been designed and implemented. To be successful, reforms must become comprehensive in design, argue the authors, although implementation may be phased over time and take local...