Title IV of the 1990 US Clean Air Act Amendments established a market for transferable sulfur dioxide emission allowances among electric utilities. The market offers firms facing high marginal costs for pollution abatement the opportunity to purchase the right to emit sulfur dioxide from firms...

There is much debate in both developed and developing countries about what kinds of financial institutions and markets best serve economic growth. To what extent can the superior performance of Japanese and German economies be attributed to their market-based system (with a focus on short-term...

This paper argues that inclusive growth analytics has a distinct character focusing on both the pace and pattern of growth. Traditionally, applied country-specific poverty and growth analyses have been done separately. This paper describes the conceptual elements for an analytical strategy aimed...

The authors use an accelerator model to assess the determinants of private investment and to analyze how adjustment policies affect those determinants. Their model emphasizes the effect of resource constraints on private investment behavior, including that arising from foreign exchange...

The authors introduce a new measure, the Trade Restrictiveness Index, to measure the restrictiveness of a system of trade protection. They propose an alternative to the commonly used ad hoc indexes of trade restrictiveness, such as the trade-weighted average tariff. That measure has no...

Since it was first recognized in August 1982, the international debt crisis has dominated economic policy making in the developing countries. The prolonged debt crisis of those highly indebted countries whose debts are owed primarily to the commercial banks has resisted all the creative...

The author analyzes the fiscal policy of primary commodity exporters. After the initial boom in fiscal spending that accompanies a commodity boom, he asks, why do commodity-exporting countries tend to maintain higher spending levels despite a drop in commodity prices. He identifies three factors...

The importance of a country's"investment climate"for economic growth has recently received much attention. The authors address the general lack of appropriate data for measuring the investment climate and its effects. The authors use a new survey of 1,500 Chinese enterprises in five cities to...

This paper analyzes results of a survey on debt management strategies conducted by the Banking and Debt Management Department of the World Bank. The analysis focuses on (1) whether a public debt management strategy exists in a given country, (2) whether it is made public, and (3) in which form...

The authors investigate the impact of the menu approach to debt rescheduling on the market value of two major creditors: U.S. and Japanese banks. They try to understand how major creditor banks are affected by debt reschedulings and the menu choices they make, so that debt deals can be...