This paper estimates the magnitude of liberal grade promotion in public schools in Nepal by comparing the pass rate in internally administered exams with the pass rate in the district-exam whose scores determine grade transition. The pass rate in the year-end exam is three and a half times as...

This paper analyzes analyze the impact of deregulatory reforms in India during the 1990s, which eliminated compulsory industrial licensing, on manufacturing firms' investment decisions. The paper finds an economically and statistically significant positive effect of delicensing on investment. It...

This paper studies the impact of input-trade liberalization on firms' decision to upgrade foreign technology embodied in imported capital goods. The empirical analysis is motivated by a simple theoretical framework of endogenous technology adoption, heterogeneous firms and imported inputs. The...

This paper analyzes the business cycle characteristics of the economies of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States using a model of a small open economy subject to interest rate and fiscal expenditure shocks and financial frictions. The paper shows that macroeconomic aggregates in this...

The natural gas industry combines activities with natural monopoly characterisitics with those that are potentially competitive. Pipeline transport and distribution, which have natural monopoly characterisitcs, require regulation of price and non-price behavior. Production is a contestable...

In the last decade Morocco undertook substantial, if gradual, trade liberalization by reducing tariffs, reforming trade regulations and signing free and preferential trade agreements with several regions and countries, including the United States, Turkey, the European Union and Arab countries....

This paper empirically studies the dynamics of labor market adjustment following the Brazilian trade reform of the 1990s. The paper uses variation in industry-speci?c tari? cuts interacted with initial regional industry mix to measure trade-induced local labor demand shocks and examines regional...

This paper investigates gender differences in the impact of Brazil's trade liberalization on labor market outcomes. To identify the causal effect of trade reforms, the paper uses difference-in-difference estimation exploiting variation across microregions in pre-liberalization industry...

There is substantial evidence that with the progressive global decline in tariffs over several decades, trade costs are a more significant barrier to trade than tariffs, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper decomposes trade costs into three categories: costs that can be lowered by trade...

The use of computable general equilibrium (CGE) simulation models for policy analysis has become widespread. However, such techniques are not well suited to economywide analysis in developing countries. Instead, simulation models relying on "borrowed" parameter estimates have been used for a...