The authors use a computable general equilibrium comparative static model of the Russian economy to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on income distribution and the poor. Their model is innovative in that they incorporate all 55,000 households from the Russian...

The authors construct a model of second-generation rent control, describing a regime that does not permit rent increases for sitting tenants--or their eviction. When an apartment becomes vacant, however, the landlord is free to negotiate a new contract with a higher rent. They argue that this...

Reinikka and Svensson exploit a unique micro-level data set on primary health care facilities in Uganda to address the question: What motivates religious not-for-profit (RNP) health care providers? The authors use two approaches to identify whether an altruistic (religious) effect exists in the...

The authors examine the architecture, elements of market design, and the products traded in derivatives exchanges around the world. The core function of a derivatives exchange is to facilitate the transfer of risk among economic agents by providing mechanisms to enhance liquidity and facilitate...

Employee participation in the financial and managerial aspects of firms has increased as governments and owners have tried to enhance productivity, broaden ownership, or facilitate privatization transactions. Many developed countries are experiencing rapid growth in schemes to introduce or...

The author provides a descriptive analysis of credit and monetary policies in Malaysia and investigates the distributional consequences of monetary policy there by focusing on small and medium-size industries and large manufacturing firms. The author suggests that"payoff"or"default"risk - as...

The objective of this paper is to apply a framework for macroeconomic consistency to Zimbabwe. Using annual data for 1981and 1987, the paper illustrates the usefulness of imposing consistency on the flow budget accounts (in both current and constant prices) of a developing economy. It presents...

Central bank losses usually originate, the author explains, when a bank takes on other functions besides its normal role, such as subsidized loans to priority sectors, rescues of troubled financial institutions, or takeovers of private or public debt. This paper attempts to review the issues...

The authors apply vector autoregression to firm-level panel data from 36 countries to study the dynamic relationship between firms'financial conditions and investment. They argue that by using orthogonalized impulse-response functions they are able to separate the"fundamental factors"(such as...

Argentina's provinces offer a unique opportunity to study bank privatization because so many transactions took place there in so short a period in the 1990s (1994-98). As the decade started, every province owned at least one bank, performance in publicly owned provincial banks was substantially...