Raw materials inventories in the manufacturing sector in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were two to five times as high in developing countries as in the United States, despite the fact that in most developing countries real interest rates are at least twice as high. Given the high cost of capital...

The authors construct a regulation model in which renegotiation occurs due to the imperfect enforcement of concession contracts. This enables the authors to provide theoretical predictions for the impact on the probability of renegotiation of a concession, regulatory institutions, institutional...

Subsidized formal credit to the agricultural sector has been advocated as more efficient, equitable, and easier to implement than, say, land reform. But the record on subsidized credit to farmers is dismal. It shows a significant failure either to achieve an increase of agricultural output...

Latin American countries have not had much experience with competition policies in the past. Combined with restrictive trade policies, the absence of competition policies has often led to monopolized domestic markets. The strong trade liberalizations in Latin America during the 1980s and the...

Utilities are characterized by three features: first, their required technologies are commonly considered specific, sunk investments; second, they display aspects of natural monopoly, including economies of scale and scope in the physical provision of basic services, economies of scale in...