The case study on the U.S. Treasury Direct examines the evolution of the electronic distribution systems for marketable and nonmarketable government securities, the main objectives, and the basic legal infrastructure and the preconditions enabling the system. The U.S. experience highlights that...

In the course of trade-policy reforms, countries must confront at least two important questions with respect to tariffs. First, what is the optimal structure of tariffs? In particular, is it optimal to tax all imports at a uniform rate? Second, should intermediate inputs be subject to import...

This report examines trends in the Zambian labor market over the period since independence. It focuses particularly on two phenomena - skill shortages and wage rigidities - which have made it more difficult for the economy to recover from the fall in price of its main export commodity : copper,...

The authors provide a conceptual framework for designing a comprehensive risk management strategy for rapid onset natural disasters at the country level, with a particular emphasis on the role of catastrophe loss funding. The authors discuss the key policy and technical issues involved in...

The author presents some general lessons in institution-building that has relevance for judiciary reform. She emphasizes the value of simplicity in design commensurate with country capacity, the importance of innovation and experimentation, and of economic openness in effective...

Revenues in countries that rely heavily on one or two primary commodities tend to fluctuate widely with prices in international markets. This fluctuation is especially wide when export taxes are a large part of the total tax base but also when the private sector reaps most of the gains from...

The authors construct a regulation model in which renegotiation occurs due to the imperfect enforcement of concession contracts. This enables the authors to provide theoretical predictions for the impact on the probability of renegotiation of a concession, regulatory institutions, institutional...

OECD barriers did not play a significant role in sub-Saharan Africa's declining position in world trade over the last three decades. The detrimental effects of the African countries'own policies, such as those that influence international transport costs, were considerably more important....

The authors aim at contributing to understand the dispersion of returns from policy reforms using cross-country regressions. The authors compare the"before reform"with"after reform"GDP growth outcome of countries that undertook import-liberalization and fiscal policy reforms. They survey a large...

The combination of distance, poor infrastructure, and being landlocked by neighbors with poor infrastructure, can make transport costs many times higher for some developing countries than for most others. Drawing on two traditions of economic modeling --Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory and von...