In 1989, the former communist countries embarked on a transition from centrally planned command economies to market economies (and from repressive dictatorships to Western-style democracies). In addressing the question,"What is the optimal strategy for this transformation?", the author revisits...

The author presents the view that informal economies arise when governments impose excessive taxes and regulations that they are unable to enforce. The author studies the determinants and effects of the informal sector using an endogenous growth model whose production technology depends...

Large informal sectors are an important characteristic of developing countries. The authors build a dynamic model in which the informal sector exists when overregulation (high tax rates and high cost for entering the formal sector) is coupled with an inefficient and corrupt system of compliance...

Community-driven development boasts many islands of success, but these have not scaled up to cover entire countries. Binswanger and Aiyar examine the possible obstacles to scaling up, and possible solutions. They consider the theoretical case for community-driven development and case studies of...

Arguably, the most important public policy initiative underway today in the Dominican Republic is the reform of its social security programs. The reform is taking place in the context of an economic crisis that will make a complex implementation process even more difficult in the first few...

Over six decades, Chile experimented with three regulatory regimes and ownership patterns for its telecommunications sectors, each with radically different investment patterns. Until 1970, Chile relied on private ownership and rate-of-return regulation, but excess demand persisted. In the 1970s,...

The author explains how recent developments in political economics improve our understanding of macroeconomic policy - especially the timing, design, and likelihood of stabilization's success through monetary and fiscal reform. The author reviews the literature on political business cycles and...

In the past decade the United Kingdom has emerged as a world pacesetter for institutional change in the telecommunications sector. In particular, British Telecom has been divested, price-cap regulation has been introduced, a new regulatory institution (Oftel) has been set up (with its Director...

The Jamaican telecommunications sector today is much more dynamic than it was before and provides much better service. There is widespread skepticism about the current regulatory framework, which is criticized for encouraging a tight telecommunications monopoly, little administrative discretion,...

This paper contains abstracts of Policy Research Working Paper series, numbers 3080 - 3134.