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 explores the role of foreign aid and remittance inflows in the mitigation of the effects of food price shocks. Using a large sample of developing countries and mobilising dynamic panel data specifications, the econometric results yield two important findings. First, remittance and aid...

Natural disaster risk is emerging as an increasingly important constraint on economic development and poverty reduction. This paper first sets out the key stylized facts in the area-that the costs of disaster have been increasing, seem set to continue to increase, and bear especially heavily on...

In most developing countries, poverty is more widespread and severe in rural than in urban areas. The author reviews some important aspects of rural poverty and draws key implications for public policy. He presents a policy framework for reducing poverty, taking into account the functional...

This paper explores the effect of U.S. unconventional monetary policy (QE2) on a group of frontier developing economies (FDEs) in Asia. This paper finds that spillovers emanating from the U.S. on FDEs in Asia have been small. The relative insulation of emerging Asia from the global financial...

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...

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...

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...