The Amazon region has been responsible for a major share of Brazilian gold production in recent years. The region has witnessed a sizable gold rush comparable only to the California gold rush last century. The gold rush has spawned a powerful informal mining sector and has attracted many people...

Actual, and potential competition is a powerful source of discipline on the pricing behavior of firms with market power. The authors develop a simple model that shows that the effects of new entry, and import competition on industry price-cost markups, depend on country size. The authors...

This report analyzes the economics, legal, and business logic of the United States, Sweden, and the European Community regarding the stainless steel industry. Trade policies and legal cases are analyzed and presented to support the author's conclusion that good economics, international...

This paper provides an overview of the privatization of the Russian coal industry. It reviews the salient aspects of the Government's privatization policy as it evolved over the years, and looks at the reasons for the successes and the pitfalls encountered along the way. Specific procedures and...

Under neoclassical assumptions, and the usual ceteris paribus stipulations, a profit maximizing firm is expected to increase production in response to rising prices. These situations normally produce the rather well-known upward sloping supply curve for the firm which can usually be generalized...

Increasing demand for clean energy sources is expanding investment in natural gas infrastructure around the world. Many international projects involve pipelines connecting energy markets in two or more countries. A key feature of investment taking place in Latin America is the convergence of gas...

The authors estimate dose-response functions for respiratory disease among children based on data from public clinics in Santiago. They find that respiratory disease among Santiago s children is significantly affected by air pollution, measured as PM10 (small dust particles). The effect, for...

How does economic geography influence industrial production and thereby affect industrial location decisions and the spatial distribution of development? For manufacturing industry, what are the externalities that matter, and to what extent? Are these externalities spatially localized? The...

Business cycles are less volatile in rich countries than in poor ones. They are also more synchronized with the world cycle. The authors develop two alternative but noncompeting explanations for those facts. Both explanations proceed from the observation that the law of comparative advantage...

Productivity, and the Rybczynski effects of factor endowments, have been highlighted as the two main reasons behind the growth of newly industrializing economies in East Asia. However, empirical studies at the aggregate level, do not find support for these claims. Focusing on Singapore's...