The restructuring of Mexico's economy has had surprisingly little effect on Mexican unemployment, which is low even in the worst years. The authors ask: Is the official definition of unemployment adequate? Is unemployment properly measured? And who bears its burden? Is the welfare cost of...

Sri Lanka has had double-digit unemployment rates for more than a decade.And by 1990, 85 percent of the unemployed had spent more than a year searching for a job. Rama analyzes whether high unemployment rates and long spells of unemployment are the result of profuse legislation of the labor...

Between World War II and the early 1970s, Tanzania developed one of the world's largest cashew nut industries. In 1973-74, marketed production reached 145,000 tons (about 30 percent of world production), with cashews providing an important source of income to some 250,000 farmers and being the...

The authors analyze the impact of three classes of external shocks in open economies, using a rational expectations framework that nests three prototype economies: a neoclassical full-employment benchmark, with intertemporally optimizing consumers and firms an instant clearing of asset, goods,...

Larsen and Shah present evidence on the level of fossil fuel subsidies and their implications for carbon dioxide emissions. They conclude that substantial fossil fuel subsidies prevail in a handful of large, carbon-emitting countries. Removing such subsidies could substantially reduce national...

The author contrasts command-and-control regulation (tight control of water purification, for example) with more flexible forms, including incentive regulation (such as price cap regulation), potential regulation (providing for closer scrutiny if enough customers complain), and reactive rather...

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...

North (1984) argues that it is not the cost of transport but the cost of transactions that prevents economies from realizing well-being - and that institutions matter because they affect the costs of transactions. The authors analyze the role of the deliberation council - an institution common...

Certain themes and findings emerge from the authors analysis of key relationships between research and development (R&D) and other factors. Among them: (1) R&D capital and the structure of production: (a) R&D capital facilitates the mapping of technological possibilities into economic...

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...