The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is far broader in policy coverage than conventional trade agreements for goods. At the same time, governments are offered more flexibility to tailor their obligations to sector- or country-specific needs. As a result, commitments vary widely...

It is often maintained, with reference to the increasing competition from newly industrialising countries, that Western support for the development of LDCs' economies would only amount to supplying the rope with which one will later be hanged. Our author argues that, contrary to that opinion,...

There has been much discussion of the Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) in recent years and various studies of their impact have been made. Much of the concern about NICs in the industrialized countries is however based on what they portend for the future rather than their present impact....

The existence of a broad range of economic activities in the “shadow” of the official economy is nothing fundamentally new. However, there are signs that the shift into the shadow economy has been increasing considerably from the seventies onwards. Whereas growth in the “official”...

Not only has the shadow economy obviously been growing much more rapidly than the official economy in the Western industrialised countries, it also appears to have a growth cycle of its own, running counter to the official economy's growth cycle. This raises a number of important questions for...

The minute advances of health policy in the developing countries and the cost explosion which has hit the health services in the industrialized countries have created an urgent problem. The main culprit is often thought to be the "common-burden principle" which most states apply to the financing...