This document sets out a new method for assessing the implications of public expenditure cuts for income distribution. The instrument is a social accounting matrix providing the appropriate conceptual framework for estimating all the direct and indirect effects of changes in any given category...

Developing economies have to balance globalisation’s benefits and costs. Increased competition can lead to better distribution and productivity but benefits are not shared equally because some sectors or regions grow faster than others. In Southeast Asia, rapid economic growth has reduced...

This paper begins with an explanation of the need for a gender perspective in the participatory development field. Subsequently it examines some of the obstacles to achieving the goals, such as cultural beliefs and practices, including the social organisation of production. Ways of surmounting...

WTO membership and closer integration with the European Union in the context of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership are reinforcing pressures on MEDA countries to improve their competitive position. Privatisation, regulatory reform, and the creation of independent regulatory agencies in telecoms...

This paper explains why a debtor country may be eager to spend foreign exchange reserves on the retirement of its cross-border obligations at market prices. A simple two-period framework shows that such spending can be profitable to both the debtor countries and their foreign creditors, and...

Investment in most heavily indebted countries has been weak since 1982. The widely accepted debt overhang proposition interprets the investment drop as a moral hazard problem: a heavy debt burden raises the incentive to consume, because the marginal benefit of investment would go to the...

In the 1960s, the principle of subsidies for agricultural inputs was unquestioned. The advent of Structural Adjustment Plans led however to a re-examination of this principle, as preference moved towards liberalisation of the agricultural sector. Given the very low consumption of fertilizers in...

The purpose of this paper is to develop a strategy for PCT in the DRC, drawing from the experience of other countries that have gone through this triple transition. These experiences will be used to identify the tasks that need to be carried out in the DRC, to illustrate domestic policies that...

Economic integration in the Pacific region — which includes the United States, Canada and Mexico — is rapidly occurring, primarily as a result of intra-regional capital flows. Private-sector business opportunities between the west and east coasts and the northern and southern rims of the...

Large Western corporations have long invested overseas to penetrate markets, seek resources, and increase efficiency. After the explosion of inward FDI to the South in the 1990s, it is now the turn of the largest companies from emerging and transition economies, including the so-called BRICs, to...