Protagonists in the 1980s' debate on equity and growth in Sri Lanka claimed to show that economic liberalization could deliver growth without jeopardizing equity, and the main lesson that they drew from the Sri Lankan experience - that welfarism should be abandoned - helped to reinforce...

The proposition that liberalization improves productivity growth is examined using data from Nepalese manufacturing-a least developed country that implemented trade liberalization during the 1980s. Productivity growth in general was negative in both the preand post-liberalization periods, but a...

Among the East Asian crisis economies, Indonesia has been by far the worst affected. Its economic contraction has been about twice as great as the next most affected economy, Thailand. It is the only crisis economy to experience serious inflation. Its political turmoil and social tension have...

There are few countries where “initial conditions” are as unfavourable as those of Laos. It is a very poor, least developed country. It is land-locked, sharing its international borders with five neighbours. It has the world's highest per capita stock of unexploded ordinance, a legacy of the...