We consider an economy (e.g., Chile 1973-83 or modern Turkey) with a minimum wage sector and a free sector and a tax on labor earnings. We ask can a minimum wage hike raise employment and economic efficiency?

In an overlapping generations model, capital and labor produce two tradeable goods. A kleptocratic government spends the tariff revenue. Trade liberalization benefits the retired generation if and only if the relative price of the capital intensive good rises. Starting from autarky, a small...

This study empirically explores the following issue: Does corruption fuel conspicuous consumption? It examines the existence and magnitude of any potential corruption-effect on conspicuous consumption expenditure. Regression analyses of an unbalanced panel data for 20 OECD countries between 2004...

Recently, Jans, Wall and Hariharan demonstrated that "there may exist an incentive for a welfare-maximizing government that normally prefers free trade to maintain a protectionist reputation by imposing a voluntary export restraint, VER." We show in the context of their model, which postulates a...

Sebastian Edwards and Alejandra Cox Edwards in their analysis of the Chilean economic liberalization argue that both capital inflows and outflows may have harmed the Chilean economy. They model the Chilean economy as using labor and fixed factors to produce traded and non-traded goods subject to...

With students in the policy and business schools with no formal economics background in mind, we propose an intuitively appealing and simple step-by-step graphical approach to explain the Heckscher-Ohlin (HO) model. Our approach is simple because it needs only two pieces of information,...

In theory, trade intensity should positively affect the quality of domestic institutions and governance; the higher the economic openness, the lower the corruption. In practice, however, the growth of economic openness has not been accompanied by the expected improvements in corruption for 34...

Via partnership agreements, the EU provides African countries with access to its markets, and asks for compliance with a given set of good governance norms and procedures. While the EU markets are significant for African countries, African markets are not significant for the EU: This asymmetric...

This report summarizes the responses of Bangladeshi Class I (highest level) public sector officials to a survey seeking opinions on a number of civil service issues, from personnel management practices to rewards and disciplinary actions, and from employees' sources of income to the budget...

The report presents the findings of a survey of public officials in Guyana, whose views were sought in a wide range of civil service issues - from personnel management, to rewards, and disciplinary actions, and, from budget environment to corruption. Answers were used to test some prior...