The Middle East and Central Asia’s economic growth potential is slowing faster than in other emerging and developing regions, dampening hopes for reducing persistent unemployment and improving the region’s generally low living standards. Why? And is it possible to alter this...

This paper reports on progress made on Nicaragua’s National Human Development Plan as of 2010. The operational goal for Nicaragua’s National Human Development Plan is economic growth with increased employment and reduced inequality and poverty. The results for 2007–10...

South-South trade agreements are proliferating: Developing countries signed 70 new agreements between 1990 and 2003. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown. This paper focuses on the static effects of South-South preferential trade agreements stemming from changes in trade...

This paper presents an overview of the economy of Hungary. The paper highlights that during the Fifth Five-Year Plan (1976–80), actual growth rates for almost all major plan aggregates remained below the targets. The lower targets set for the increase in both consumption and investment in...

The government of Rwanda has recognized that economic development in most areas would have to be the responsibility of the private sector (particularly since military and civil service employment would be reduced), but that the public sector could still have a role in promoting economic equality...

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix analyzes developments in the domestic economy of Uzbekistan. The paper highlights that after declining by 17½ percent during 1992–94, real GDP fell by only about 1 percent in 1995. The moderation in the output decline was due in part...

This paper analyzes the declines in economic activity experienced by Bulgaria, the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR), and Romania in the period since the initiation of market-oriented reforms in these countries. The paper reviews developments in the three countries and empirically...

We analyze the relationship between international trade and the quality of economic institutions, such as contract enforcement, rule of law, and property rights. In our model, firms differ in their preferences for institutional quality, which is determined endogenously in a political economy...

While anecdotal evidence suggests that interest groups play a key role in shaping immigration policy, there is no systematic empirical analysis of this issue. In this paper, we construct an industry-level dataset for the United States, by combining information on the number of temporary work...

Subsidy reform has been a key component of the pre-accession reform agenda of the 10 new member states that joined the EU in 2004 (EU-10). During the pre-accession period, these countries had to undertake a number of important structural reforms in their economies. One of the most critical...