Over the medium time horizon, skill upgrading, differentials in sectoral technological progress, and migration of labor out of farming activities are some of the major structural adjustment factors shaping the evolution of an economy and its connected poverty trends. The main focus of the...

The authors examine an issue at the nexus of domestic competition policy and international trade, the interaction between goods trade and market power in domestic trade and distribution sectors. Theory suggests a set of linkages between service-sector competition and goods trade supported by...

Using data from Mexico, the authors study empirically the link between trade policy and individual income risk and the extent to which this varies across workers of different human capital (education) levels. They use longitudinal income data on workers to estimate time-varying individual income...

Trade facilitation is the ability of countries to deliver goods and services on time at the lowest possible cost. It has emerged as an important issue in unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral trade liberalization. Most countries have embarked on heroic reforms aimed at reducing transaction...

This paper presents a model of global liquidity shortages. Liquid claims are enforceable promises that play a transaction role. Since developed economies have a comparative advantage in creating liquidity, they export liquid claims to emerging economies, resulting in a permanent current account...

This paper presents a selective overview of the literature on modeling labor market policies in developing countries. It considers welfare economics, theoretical models, and empirical evidence to highlight the three general features needed in future research on labor market policy in developing...

This paper assesses some of the main strands of the theoretical literature on unemployment and employment and shows that their interesting conclusions may not be transferable to low-income countries whose endowment and production structures are profoundly different from that of high-income...

This paper describes important trade-offs that microfinance practitioners, donors, and regulators navigate. Drawing evidence from large, global surveys of microfinance institutions, the authors find a basic tension between meeting social goals and maximizing financial performance. For example,...

There is increasing empirical evidence that vertical product differentiation is an important determinant of international trade. However, the economic literature so far has solely focused on the case in which quality trade stems from differences between countries. No studies investigate the role...