This paper examines the welfare effects of protection in two sectors characterized by high wage premia, autos and steel, to determine if protection is justified to correct for the labor misallocation due to wage premia. If wage premia are exogenous, under most product market structures, labor...

Services as a share of gross domestic product and in foreign direct investment flows have increased in importance both globally and in the transition countries of Europe and Central Asia. So has the need for both academics and policymakers to understand the impacts of services liberalization in...

The Russian tariff structure contains over 11,000 tariff lines of which about 1,700 use the so-called "combined" tariff rate system. For the combined system tariff lines, the actual tariff applied by Russian customs is the maximum of the ad valorem or specific tariff. The lack of available data...

July 2001 - Among Chile's bilateral regional agreements, only Chile's agreements with "Northern" partners provide enough market access to offset the costs to Chile of trade diversion. Because of preferential market access, however, "additive regionalism" is likely to provide Chile with far more...

The general principle is that it is crucial for the government to provide a stable macroeconomic environment conducive to business development with a clear, transparent and neutral regulatory environment and neutral incentives to all firms and industries. Clear, transparent and neutral...

The desiccation of the Aral Sea was one of the greatest environmental disasters of the latter part of the twentieth century. In 1960, it was the fourth largest lake in the world. However, since 1965, the sea has lost seventy five percent of its volume and the coastline has advanced hundred...

What is the structure of the Most-Favored Nation (MFN) tariff of Russia? How has it been changing over time? What are the sectors in which tariffs are high or low? How diverse is the tariff structure of Russia? Surprisingly, these questions have not been answered to date due to a lack of data...

A two-tiered exchange rate system can be interpreted as a set of separate taxes on money and other financial assets. If the official two-tiered exchange rate system coexists with a black market for foreign exchange, then there is implicit taxation of the international goods trade as well. This...