As it has rightfully been recognized by China's central government, successful urbanization will be decisive for the nation's future development. Key challenges will be to realize urbanization economies, improve production and innovation capabilities, direct urban and suburban growth and improve...

This paper investigates efficiency losses caused by independent tax systems and proposes ways of remedying this coordination failure Whereas the harmful effects of tariff competition have been thoroughly explored in the trade policy literature little is known about the externalities that result...

Since the mid-1980s a substantial body of research has taken shape on trade in services. Much of this is inspired by the WTO or regional trade agreements, especially the EU. However, an increasing number of papers focus on the impacts of unilateral services sector liberalization. The literature...

The IMF attempts to stabilize private capital flows to emerging markets by providing public monitoring and emergency finance. In analyzing its role we contrast cases where banks and bondholders do the lending. Banks have a natural advantage in monitoring and creditor coordination, while bonds...

We examine the effect of immigration on public spending from a theoretical (political economic) and an empirical perspective. We distinguish between public spending on private goods and on public goods. Our model implies that whether immigration increases or decreases public spending primarily...

How does international competition affect overseas outsourcing? While it is commonly believed that international competition enables firms to desert high cost countries in favor of low wage locations, the frequency of such responses may be reduced if the movement of outsourcing activities...

This paper explores the possibility that unregulated FDI flows are causally implicated in the decline in labor productivity growth in semi-industrialized economies. These effects are hypothesized to operate through the negative impact of firm mobility on worker bargaining power and thus...

This paper reviews the debate on the economic effect of the international fragmentation of production, also known as "offshoring", and provides a preliminary investigation of the impact of intermediate imported inputs on employment and wages in five European countries (Germany, Spain, France,...

This paper presents a detailed 2019 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Benin as a basis for policy analysis with a focus on agriculture, food processing and energy generation from byproducts. It is based on official statistics collected from national and international institutions (national...

Investment growth in emerging market and developing economies has slowed sharply since 2010. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the causes and implications of this slowdown and presents a menu of policy responses to improve investment growth. It reports four main results. First, the...