India's growth performance has been impressive over the last two decades. But its sustainability has been in question, first with the 1991 fiscal-balance of payments crisis (BoP), and then again after 1997/98, when fiscal deficits returned to the 10 percent of GDP range and government debt grew....

The welfare effects of preferential trading agreements, are most directly linked to changes in trade prices - that is, the terms of trade. The authors use a simple strategic pricing game in segmented markets, to measure the effects of MERCOSUR on the pricing of"non-member"exports to the regional...

If equity markets are financially integrated, the price of risk should be the same across markets. If the markets are not financially integrated - possibly because of barriers to capital flows across markets - the price of risk may differ across markets. The author investigates one measure of...

Trademarks are words, signs, symbols, or combinations thereof that identify goods as manufactured by a particular person or a company, therefore allowing consumers to distinguish between goods originating in different sources. Trademarks belong to the wider family of intellectual property rights...

The Uruguay Round agreements on agriculture were intended to move member countries toward a fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system. By progressively reducing domestic government support and export subsidies, converting nontariff barriers to tariffs, and reducing barriers to market...

The author provides theoretical and empirical evidence of a negative association between income inequality and real exchange rates. First, he builds a theoretical model showing the transmission mechanism from inequality to real exchange rates. Second, using cross-country data, he demonstrates...

Collectively or individually, countries are likely to implement policies designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Experience from tradable quota schemes suggests that emissions trading could significantly reduce the costs of emission limits. The Kyoto Protocol provides the framework for a...

The authors investigate whether firms'access to external financing, to fund growth differs between market-based, and bank-based financial systems. Using firm-level data for forty countries, they compute the proportion of firms in each country that relies on external finance, and examine how that...

Despite significant progress in economic reformthroughout the 1990s, and an exemplary development of the policymaking framework in the second part of the decade, Brazil suffered a major public debt and currency crisis in 2002. Though the political origin of the uncertainty cannot be ignored, the...

Economists often argue that the level and structure of a country's trade barriers and the quality of its governance policies (for example, regulating foreign investment or limiting commercial activity with red tape) have a major influence on its economic growth and performance. One problem...