This paper is a contribution to the ongoing debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment. Through a contrast of the experiences of two regional groupings of countries — East Asia and Eastern Europe — that have both experienced rapid industrialisation, it makes clear...

The so-called “accession economies” preparing to enter the European Union are experiencing increased inward capital flows based upon positive interest spreads and expectations of currency appreciation. While the authorities of these countries have tried to manage these flows and to prevent...

This Technical Paper examines: (i) how the governments of the six dynamic Asian economies — Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand — have responded to the challenge posed by the Montreal Protocol to reduce their consumption of ozone-depleting substances like...

Many existing works using firm-level data sets have examined whether or not knowledge spills over from MNEs to domestically owned firms in a less developed country, but the literature has not come to a general consensus on the presence of spillovers. A possible reason for the mixed results is...

The experience of the five examined industries (agro-food in Chile, cut flowers in Kenya, garment in Lesotho and in Mauritius and seafood in Thailand) demonstrates that non-traditional industries can emerge and achieved strong growth rates in very diverse settings in terms of geography and...

In the terminology of the International Monetary Fund, "conditionality" refers to the policies the Fund expects a member to follow in order to be able to avail itself of credit from the Fund (Gold, 1979). Over the years, major changes in the landscape surrounding the Fund and in the situation of...

The five former Soviet republics have become separate states, developing at different rates and in different directions, and with different political and economic regimes. As a result, the cohesion of the region has broken down and economic development is hampered by internal and regional...

This study presents the main developments in the manufacturing industry in Cameroon, based on firm-level data covering the 1980-95 period. The emphasis is on structural factors of competitiveness. A production function and an export function are estimated in order to study the determinants of...

This paper investigates the application of the principle of comparative advantage to policy analysis and policy formulation. It is concerned with both the theory and the measurement of comparative advantage. Despite its central role in economics, the theory is found to be at an impasse, with its...

Against the background of Brazil’s highly unequal distribution of income and wealth, and its history of alienation and passivity of the poor, in particular during the years of political authoritarianism, this paper shows how an active civil society, driven by ethical concerns, has, since 1993,...