There is a concern that the state-dominated, inefficient, and fragile banking systems in many low-income countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, are a major hindrance to economic growth. This paper systematically analyzes the impact of the far-reaching banking sector reforms undertaken in...

This 2005 Article IV Consultation highlights that Singapore’s economy has recovered rapidly since mid-2003, having weathered a series of adverse shocks since the Asian crisis. This turnaround owes much to a favorable external environment, supportive macroeconomic policies, and continued...

Uruguay has experienced a remarkable recovery since the 2002 crisis, supported by sound policies and favorable external conditions. With the framework put in place in 2002, Uruguay abandoned an exchange rate peg in favor of a free float, adoped a monetary regime initially based on money targets,...

This paper considers the effects of trade policy-tariffs and quotas-when importing is done by competitive traders who are identical ex ante but differ ex post. We show that the standard equivalence results no longer hold and the conventional ranking of tariffs and quotas is turned on its head:...

This paper examines the effect of unionization on welfare and trade policy in a model of duopolists competing in a third market. It shows that the traditional result that the presence of a union necessitates a stronger strategic trade policy to reach the optimal level of welfare depends on the...

This paper examines the composition of primary commodity exports by industrial countries and contrasts this composition with that of the exports by developing countries. Both the share of industrial countries’ commodity exports in world commodity exports, as well as in their own total...

This paper investigates whether a regional bloc would enlarge or remain stagnant in size using a model where enlargement is the endogenous outcome of the interaction between the supply of and demand for membership. We show that a maximum size of the bloc exists beyond which the regional...

This paper examines the empirical relationship between trade and total factor productivity (TFP) in South Africa. It uses (i) a time series approach where trade is defined in terms of aggregate outcomes, i.e., as the share of imports plus exports in GDP, and (ii) a cross sectional approach,...

Although a centerpiece of the reform process in Central and Eastern Europe, large-scale privatization cannot be undertaken all at once and policymakers inevitably face the choice of privatizing some sectors before others. This paper analyzes the allocative efficiency implications of alternate...

We study versions of a general equilibrium banking model with moral hazard under either constant or increasing returns to scale of the intermediation technology used by banks to screen and/or monitor borrowers. If the intermediation technology exhibits increasing returns to scale, or it is...