In 1987 the European Community began the ambitious task of forging a single market for goods and services across the national borders of its member states by 1992. Substantive reform of the Community's Common Agricultural Policy - necessary for the full integration of existing markets - has not...

The author argues that Poland must choose an agricultural policy that promotes efficiency, structural change, and adjustment to the new market environment and eventual membership in the European Union. That policy must take into account both the needs of, and the financial constraints on, Polish...

A shock that lowers profits depresses employment less when wages are flexible in terms of the value-added output price. This kind of flexibility allows a country to remain competitive in world markets when a shock to profits lowers its value-added output price. In many countries, wages are...

In the chaotic financial environment of East Asia in 1997-98, daily changes in stock prices of as much as 10 percent became commonplace. The authors analyze what type of news moved the market in those days of extreme market jitters. They find that movements are triggered by both local and...

The European Community (EC) grain exports increased significantly over the last three decades. The EC's Project 1992 will abolish internal trade barriers to facilitate the movement of goods, persons, services, and capital between member countries. One aspect of the program is elimination of...

This report considers how product market integration in a country's primary agricultural export alters the economic activities of men and women in a poor economy. Between 1993 and 1997, Vietnam relaxed its rice export quota and freed internal restrictions on the trade of rice across regions....

The woodlands in some parts of the Sahel are effectively an open-access resource. Under open access, fuelwood cutters have no incentive to allow for benefits that might accrue if the wooded area were managed rather than mined. Those benefits include sustainable streams of fuelwood, fruits, and...

The conceptual issues confronting compilers of price indices have not changed much over the years. They include the intractability of basic index-number problems, the practical difficulties of sampling and matching prices, and the uncertainties about the appropriate weighting scheme for...

It is commonly believed that taxing agricultural commodities in developing countries, and subsidizing agricultural commodities in industrial countries, reduces incentives in the developing countries for both current production and longer-term investments in capital, knowledge, technology, and...

The three goals of recent agricultural pricing policies in Mexico for maize have been to raise farm income and crop profitability by boosting domestic prices through trade restrictions, to provide some price certainty at planting time, and to reduce year-to-year variations in maize prices. The...