Price and income elasticities estimated from a country's export demand function are used both to predict and to prescribe effective export strategies. But the focus on elasticities has led to the neglect of an important empirical regularity: a strong persistencein the growth rate of a country's...

The authors examine the effects on national welfare and market access of two public procurement practices-discrimination against foreign suppliers of goods and services and nontransparency of the procedures used to allocate government contracts to firms. Both types of policies have become...

This paper emphasizes the fiscal underpinnings of the inflationary process and those particular dynamics when a dual price system is present. In particular, it explores the links between price controls and decontrols and the government budget, mainly through the flow of subsidies to either...

The authors compare and contrast the design and outcomes of different foreign exchange auctions in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa and present a typology of such auctions. They identify two distinct sets of countries in terms of the auctions'features, policy interventions, and outcomes. In...

In countries where the black market premium on foreign exchange is exceptionally high, often more than 100 percent, lowering the black market rate to a level close to the market determined official rate will improve the balance of payments and increase exports. Floating the currency to...

Effective protection rates in India are so high and vary so greatly that anything short of low uniform tariffs and the complete elimination of quantitative restrictions would not make the industrial incentive scheme transparent, as it needs to be. The authors produce evidence to show that there...

This paper uses an analytically tractable intertemporal framework for analyzing the dynamic pricing of a utility with an underdeveloped network (a typical case in most developing countries) facing a competitive fringe, short-run network adjustment costs, theft of service, and the threat of a...

Measures of long-term trends in world export prices for manufactured goods, and in the terms of trade between manufactured goods and primary products, are sensitive to many choices in methods for weighting indexes, base periods, and (most important) changes in quality. For example: 1) wieghting...

In considering whether to privatize a large state-owned steel enterprise in Argentina, the question arose: Would its sale to a consortium of large domestic enterprises, and the resulting increase in firm concentration, inevitably lead to cries for protection? To shed light on the question, the...

Administrative exchange allocation has been common in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Steps to dismantle or modify these control mechanisms have been carried out through traditional schemes. The authors draw lessons from sub-Saharan Africa's historical experience useful...