"This paper first describes those features of the electricity supply industry that make a prospective market monitoring process essential to a well-functioning wholesale market. Some of these features are shared with the securities industry, although the technology of electricity production and...

"The authors analyze general equilibrium relationships between trade policy and the household distribution of income, decomposing social welfare into real income level and variance components and emphasizing Gini and Atkinson indexes. They embed these inequality-adjusted social welfare functions...

Economic Consulting Associates (ECA) and Cambridge Economic Policy Associates (CEPA) have been engaged by Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) and the World Bank to prepare a policy paper for enhanced regional electricity trade involving the Economic Cooperation Council (ECO)...

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the channels through which rising commodity prices might affect countries in the Europe and Central Asia Region (ECA) in the short run and to indicate which countries are most likely to be significantly affected. This paper discusses the effects of the...

"This paper critically reviews existing energy demand forecasting methodologies highlighting the methodological diversities and developments over the past four decades in order to investigate whether the existing energy demand models are appropriate for capturing the specific features of...

"The author tests the hypothesis that during systemic banking crises, access to finance is opportunistically tightened by incumbents to eliminate or weaken competition from mainly young firms. He finds this to be especially true in more corrupt countries. To do so, he uses a methodology similar...

"This paper studies the decision of firms to extend trade credit to customers and its relation with their financing decisions. The authors use a novel firm-level database of Chinese SMEs with unique information on market power in both output and input markets and on the amount, terms, and...

The Lao economy faces increased challenges from currency depreciation and high inflation. Economic recovery from COVID-19 has been gradual, undermined by macroeconomic instability and external factors. The combination of the need to service large external debts, high import prices, and limited...