This paper assesses the benefits, risks, and limitations of human rights based approaches to development, which can be catalogued on the basis of the institutional mechanisms they rely on: global compliance based on international and regional treaties; the policies and programming of donors and...

As free trade areas have proliferated and statutory tariffs have been dramatically reduced in recent decades, non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to international trade have risen in importance. Destination-specific product standards are one of the major types of NTBs as they impose additional costs on...

Heterogeneity of public utility services is common in developing countries. In a "high-level" equilibrium, the quality of utility services is high, consumer willingness to pay for services is high, the utility is well funded and staff well paid in order to induce high quality of performance. In...

The literature on the relationship between economic diversification and development has grown rapidly in recent years, partly due to the surprising finding that diversification rises with gross domestic product per capita up to a certain point. Export diversification along the extensive margin...

Large-scale disasters regularly affect societies over the globe, causing large destruction and damage. After each of these events, media, insurance companies, and international institu-tions publish numerous assessments of the "cost of the disaster." However these assessments are based on...

This paper analyzes the impact of banking crises on manufacturing exports exploiting the fact that sectors differ in their needs for external financing. Relying on data from 23 banking crises episodes involving both developed and developing countries during the period 1980-2000 the authors...

The number of national export promotion agencies has tripled over the past two decades. Although more countries made them part of their export strategy, studies criticized their efficacy in developing countries. The agencies were retooled, partly in response to these critiques. This paper...

There is growing clamor in industrial countries for additional border taxes on imports from countries with lower carbon prices. The authors confirm the findings of other research that unilateral emissions cuts by industrial countries will have minimal carbon leakage effects. However, output and...