The authors focus on two broad questions: 1) what is the proper role for project evaluation in today's world, where countries have reduced major economic distortions and are reconsidering the role of the state? and 2) besides project evaluation, how else can economic analysis ensure high-quality...

Traditional approaches to project appraisal fail in practice to address two fundamental questions: whether a project belongs in the public or the private sector; and what effect any external assistance associated with the project has on the country's development. The first issue is of general...

This article investigates the impact of labor market regulations in a setting with incomplete compliance. It takes as its starting point the limited evidence regarding the distortionary costs of labor market regulations and argues that there may exist natural limits to the efficiency losses...

The authors investigate the impact of labor market regulations in settings where compliance is incomplete. They review some stylized facts about labor market behavior, present an analytical model that may explain such behavior, and provide a checklist for assessing the distortionary impact of a...

The authors review the arguments for taxing imports, considering two cases: one in which a country has market power in the export commodity, and one in which it does not. They conclude that for countries having market share there are strong analytical and practical arguments for an export tax....

The first World Bank Economists' Forum was held on May 3-4, 1999. The forum attempts to answer these questions: How do you recognize a hidden fiscal crisis? When capital flows are volatile, what types of policy announcements can help fend off currency crises? Do government training programs for...

Following the Stolper-Samuelson type of logic, the general impression is that freeing up trade, whether preferentially as in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or on a nondiscriminatory basis as in the Uruguay Round, must lower real wages in one set of countries and raise them in...

Public debt in Thailand increased substantially between 1997 and 1999, leading to widespread concerns about its near and longer-term impact. This paper discusses the increase in public debt during the crisis and assesses its impact on various monetary and fiscal policy aggregates. Of particular...

A key issue in the NAFTA debate was the effect of international capital mobility. This paper considers the implications of capital mobility in a three-good, three-country model of preferential trading. Capital mobility gives rise to foreign investment-induced trade creation in one country, but...