Equity flows to developing countries climbed to an estimated $13 billion in 1992, four times the amount invested three years earlier. Investment increased partly because countries removed restrictions on foreign ownership, liberalized capital account transactions, and generally made foreign...

Price and income elasticities estimated from a country's export demand function are used both to predict and to prescribe effective export strategies. But the focus on elasticities has led to the neglect of an important empirical regularity: a strong persistencein the growth rate of a country's...

The authors argue that further moves to liberalize trade and to implement existing GATT rules and principles may have a greater impact on global competition than would the pursuit of harmonization of competition policy. They also suggest that current GATT rules and case law provide scope for...

Contrary to common perceptions, higher environmental standards in industrial countries have not tended to lower their international competitiveness, the author contends. There has been little systematic relationship between higher environmental standards and competitiveness in environmentally...

Commodity prices have historically been among the most volatile of international prices. Measured volatility (the standard deviation of price changes) has not been below 15 percent and at times has been more than 50 percent. Often the volatility of commodity prices has exceeded that of exchange...

Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa remain dependent on a few primary commodities -- coffee, cocoa, cotton, sugar, tea, and tobacco -- for a large share of export earnings. Because demand for these commodities is price-inelastic, production and export expansion can depress world prices and...

Commodities are often stored during periods in which storage returns a negative price. Further, during periods of"backwardation,"the expected revenue from holding inventories will be negative. Since the 1930s, the negative price of storage has been attributed to an offsetting"convenience...

The authors model the static and steady-state effects on trade, production, and market structure of completion of the European Union's (EU's) internal market. The impetus for change comes from the removal of border costs and the costs of producing to different national standards. It also comes...

Cotton exports account for a significant share of total commodity exports in francophone African countries, suggesting that these countries have a large exposure to volatility in cotton prices. An analysis of the cotton marketing systems in these countries revealed that most of the price risk is...

The author assesses the Czechoslovak mass privatization program for speed, equity, and corporate governance. The program transferred claims on assets in 1,491 enterprises - assets worth about $10.7 billion - to the 8.5 million citizens who participated in the scheme. The entire cycle of project...