This paper analyses the effects of fiscal policies on rates of interest and wealth in the world economy. Uncertainty concerning the length of life yields an equilibrium in which private and social rates of discount differ and budget deficits exert real effects. It is shown that a current budget...

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic optimizing model of the current account. The model focuses, on real factors that determine the evolution of saving and investment, and hence the external balance. Three types of shocks are at the center of the analysis: productivity shocks, shocks to...

The paper analyzes the effect of the generosity of the welfare state on the skill composition of immigrants. We develop a parsimonious model in which the effect of an increase in the generosity (and taxes) of the welfare state on the skill composition of immigrants under free migration is...

While barriers to trade in most goods and some services including capital flows have been reduced considerably over the past two decades, many remain. Such policies harm most the economies imposing them, but the worst of the merchandise barriers (in agriculture and textiles) are particularly...

This paper provides new estimates of the global gains from multilateral trade reform and their distribution among developing countries in the presence of trade preferences. Particular attention is given to agriculture, as farmers constitute the poorest households in developing countries but are...

The authors estimate the impact of global merchandise trade distortions and services regulations on agricultural value added in various countries. Using the latest versions of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) database and the GTAP-AGR model of the global economy, their results suggest...

Most of the world's poorest people depend on farming for their livelihood. Earnings from farming in low-income countries are depressed partly due to a pro-urban bias in own-country policies, and partly because richer countries (including some developing countries) favor their farmers with import...

Anderson and Martin examine the extent to which various regions, and the world as a whole, could gain from multilateral trade reform over the next decade. They use the World Bank's linkage model of the global economy to examine the impact first of current trade barriers and agricultural...

The author offers an economic assessment of the opportunities and challenges provided by the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda, particularly through agricultural trade liberalization, for low-income countries seeking to trade their way out of poverty. After discussing links...

This paper has two purposes. It first considers the impact on world food prices of the changes in restrictions on trade in staple foods during the 2008 world food price crisis. Those changes -- reductions in import protection or increases in export restraints -- were meant to partially insulate...