It is generally agreed that the arrangements that have regulated trade in textiles and clothing have slowed the natural shift in comparative advantage from industrial countries to developing countries. But there is quite a bit of disagreement about how restrictive the Multi-Fibre Agreements...

The authors of this paper use simple statistical methods to measure the effect of adjustment lending (AL) on economic performance. Using eight economic indicators, they rely on traditional"before-after"comparisons of AL recipients and a control group of 62 countries. How have countries under...

Adjustment to the macroeconomic crises of the eighties was least successful on the fiscal front. The authors, in this introduction to a symposium on fiscal issues in adjustment, summarize the issues raised by papers in the symposium. Those papers deal with various aspects of the fiscal crisis...

After the fall in average per capita GDP growth that took place in the 1980s, adjustment lending programs supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) were launched in response to the deteriorating external environment. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and...

At the center of the controversy about effectiveness of"adjustment with growth"loan packages from the IMF and the World Bank has been the heavy emphasis on real exchange rate depreciation as a way to restore external balance and elicit a positive supply response. The authors find that adjustment...

The demand for accountability in aid-for-trade is increasing but monitoring has focused on case studies and impressionistic narratives. The paper reviews recent evidence from a wide range of studies, recognizing that a multiplicity of approaches is needed to learn what works and what does not....

With free trade areas (FTAs) undernegotiation between Japan and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) members and between the Republic of Korea and AFTA members, preferential market access will become more important in Asian regionalism. Protectionist pressures will likely increase through rules of...

This paper explores how the elimination of Madagascar's Marketing Board in 1995 affected prices paid to farmers, incentives, and regional indicators of poverty and inequality. After steadily losing market share, Madagascar has been able to regain some of the lost ground since the mid-1990s....

Duty drawback (or rebate) systems, reduce or eliminate the duties paid on imported intermediate goods, or raw materials used in the production of exports. When a firm imports an intermediate product for use in the production of an export good, tariff payments on the imported intermediate good...

Determining how imports react to cyclical and secular (long term) factors has been a recurrent theme in the empirical trade literature. The evidence suggests that cyclical income elasticities of import demand are generally higher than long term elasticities - particularly for basic materials and...