This paper analyzes the role of public finance and trade policies in the adjustment experience of Chile over the past 15 years. The purpose is to first review the Chilean public sector and trade reforms, and then to examine their role in the economic development of Chile. The paper is divided...

This report proposes an action plan for the rationalization of tax structures for Central America. To harmonize tax policies among Central American nations, the report recommends the following: (a) continuing trade liberalization, by reducing thelevel and dispersion of effective trade...

This paper models endogenous union-induced labor market distortions in applied general equilibrium. It also investigates systematically the impact of labor market distortions under different market structure assumptions. The paper describes how to model labor market distortions with and without...

This study explores the impact of competition from international trade on wage discrimination by sex in two highly open economies. If discrimination is costly, as posited in neoclassical theory based on Becker (1959), then increased industry competitiveness from international trade reduces the...

In 1989, Indonesia's Minister for Population and the Environment introduced its"Clean River"Program (PROKASIH). The program's purpose is to improve water quality by reducing pollution emmissions. Though participation is not entirely voluntary, compliance with the terms of the agreement signed by...

The authors provide estimates of the economic impact of initial adoption of genetically modified (GM) cotton and of its potential impacts beyond the few countries where it is currently common. They use the latest version of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) database and model. The results...

Regional inequalities represent a continuing development challenge in most countries, especially those with large geographic areas. Globalization heightens these challenges because it places a premium on skills: since rich regions typically also have better educated and better skilled labor, the...

The collective approach to household behavior relaxes the restrictive features of the unitary model by specifying household welfare as a weighted combination of the individuals'utilities. But the weights are assumed fixed or exogenous to the analysis. The authors extend the collective approach...

The black market foreign exchange premium is an important implicit tax on exports, creating a conflict between the fiscal goal of financing government spending with a limited menu of tax instruments and the allocative goal of stimulating exports. In this paper, the premium is solved for in a...

In the late 1980s, Chile planned to privatize Santiago's sanitary works enterprise (EMOS) but instead reformed it under public ownership. It did so through a regulatory framework that mimicked the design of a concession with a private utility, setting tariffs that ensured at least a seven...