The author summarizes the major findings and recommendations in Averting the Old Age Crisis, describing problems in traditional pension systems and proposals for reform. Then she describes how those reforms are being implemented in many countries and examines empirical evidence about pension...

The authors investigate the association between per capita income and the magnitude and quality of road infrastructure. They adopt an empirical approach, directly comparing or correlating a countries income with selected variables associated with existing road networks. Cross-section analysis of...

Three dimensions of public goods--nonrivalry of benefits, the possibility of being excluded from benefits, and the technology for aggregating public supply--determine what kinds of institutions and transnational actions are required for their provision and financing. For some public...

Should the United States increase taxes and tariffs in the energy sector to reduce its federal deficit? This paper uses a twelve sector general equilibrium model to estimate the fiscal effects, and the effects on welfare and employment, of : (i) a 25 percent import tax on imported crude...

Interdependence of trade and public finance policy are important considerations in designing macroeconomic policy, public revenue policy, and public expenditure policy. A competitive real exchange rate, improved trade performance, and trade liberalization are all built on the base of sound...

In developing countries, most financial assets in formal markets are deposits at financial institutions. This potentially important tax base could be taxed at a low administrative cost. When revenues of financial taxes are significant, implicit taxes dwarf explicit taxes. The author focuses on...

Adjustment to the macroeconomic crises of the eighties was least successful on the fiscal front. The authors, in this introduction to a symposium on fiscal issues in adjustment, summarize the issues raised by papers in the symposium. Those papers deal with various aspects of the fiscal crisis...

This paper specifies a microeconomic model to estimate the impact of investment in public infrastructure on private industrial profitability. Empirical results based on time series data for 34 industries characterize the Mexican industrial structure as having involuntary unemployment, deficient...

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 theoretical basis for the"heterodox shocks"recently implemented in Argentina and Brazil is that chronic inflation is essentially inertial - the product of staggered prices and wage adjustments. The underlying assumption is that the economic process is a cooperative game. Without legal and...