Local content programs - especially in the auto industry - accompanied many import substitution policies during the 1960s and 1970s, but most were abandoned in countries that liberalized trade in the 1980s, and early 1990s. The high economic costs of these programs, and their inherent...

The Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States aims to create a free trade zone for economic development. The Agreement is expected to intensify commerce and investment among the participating countries. This paper analyzes the changes in the production and...

Based on static analysis, a number of studies argue that forming a regional trade agreement is more likely to raise welfare if member countries are"natural trading partners,"while other studies claim that the opposite is true. Schiff and Wang look at the argument from a dynamic viewpoint by...

Economic geography has become a mantra for many economists, geographers, and regional scientists. Previous studies have tested the importance of economic geography for production activities and found a significant association between them. Most of these studies, however, have not taken into...

In 1989 the government of Guinea enacted far-reaching reform of its water sector, which had been dominated by a poorly run public agency. The government signed a lease contract for operations and maintenance with a private operator, making a separate public enterprise responsible for ownershipof...

Over the period 1984 to 1987, a major liberalization of restrictive trade policies was implemented in the Moroccan manufacturing sector. The level of imports changed across different industries according to each industry's degree of liberalization. The paper focuses on exploring the distribution...

Data for recent years indicate an acceleration of Chinese industrial growth, from the annual rates of about 10 percent recorded in the quarter century before economic reform to figures approaching 15 percent in the mid- and late 1980s. Evaluating the statistics underlying these reports requires...

Countries sometimes use export controls on raw materials to encourage domestic processing. The motivation is usually to assure raw materials at low prices for domestic industries, although exports are sometimes controlled in an attempt to increase export earnings (by promoting exports of higher...

Little evidence exists on the distribution across countries of toxic releases by manufacturing, or on how those patterns change through time. A number of studies have asked whether environmental controls imposed in the industrialized economies are diverting investments in pollution-intensive...

Increasing urbanization and industrialization can exacerbate pollution problems in developing countries. Tax revenues in developing countries are too low to support adequate infrastructure for treating and disposing of wastes, but the problem is also attributable to the classic problem of...