A growing body of evidence suggests that the close availability of diverse business services is important for economic growth. Producer services such as managerial and engineering consulting can provide specialized knowledge to help domestic firms develop at lower unit cost. But these...

What, if any, is the link between labor market policies that benefit insiders - for example, regulations guaranteeing high minimum wages and strict job security - and political regimes. Is it true that in a democracy outsiders vote and impose limits on what insiders can achieve, whereas in a...

The authors find that incorporating tax-favored consumption in models of environmental tax swaps may overturn key results from earlier studies. In particular, a revenue-neutral pollution tax (or auctioned permits) can produce a substantial"double dividend"by reducing both pollution and the costs...

The author analyzes subsidies in Chile's public utilities. Over the last decade, especially, significant efforts have been made to extend public services to rural populations. An explicit consumption subsidy for potable water (targeted to the poorest twenty percent of the population) currently...

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...

Transition literature has emphasized stabilization and enterprise restructuring. Both cross-country analyses and country-specific studies have tended to focus on fiscal stabilization and its indicators, highlighting the importance of quantitative fiscal adjustment to stabilization outcomes. Less...

The authors present a dynamic, quantitative macroeconomic framework designed for analyzing the impact of adjustment policies and exogenous shocks on poverty and income distribution. They emphasize the role of labor market segmentation, urban informal activities, the impact of the composition of...

The Islamic Republic of Iran has committed itself to substantial trade and market reform in its Third Five-Year Development Plan. It started out with nontariff barriers on all products, a dual exchange rate regime with the market rate more than four times the official rate, and domestic energy...

This paper contains abstracts of Policy Research Working Paper series Numbers 1871-1893.

The authors consider how service liberalization differs from goods liberalization in terms of welfare, the level and composition of output, and factor prices within a developing economy, in this case Tunisia. Despite recent movements toward liberalization, Tunisian service sectors remain largely...