Can process conditionality enhance poverty reduction in developing countries? We address this question in a political-economic framework with political distortions on the recipient and the donor side. Process conditionality is a useful tool only if the international financial institutions hold...

Only three years after its endorsement by the World Bank and the IMF, the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC)--Initiative was considerably altered and enhanced. This policy shift can be explained as a result of utility maximization behavior by national and international politicians,...

We analyze how the standard results in lobbying theory change when one side has a second instrument at its disposal. We look at the effect concessions by one side have on the outcome in a Nash and a Stackelberg game. Copyright 2001 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

This paper analyzes recent free trade arrangements from a positive political economy perspective. In contrast to most other literature which fails to take into account geographical factors, it is argued here that proximity and transportation costs play an important role in trade arrangements....