Economic performance in Japan--the world's second largest economy, the largest in Asia, and the world's largest creditor country--is going from bad to worse. Growth has essentially been flat since 1992, and the economy is now shrinking at an annualized rate of more than 3 percent. The OECD...

Today the US and China are probably the world's two largest economies (Table 1). Relations between these two countries are crucial to the future development of the world economy. Unfortunately economic relations between the two countries are troubled. China is large, rapidly growing, and still...

In this paper we use cross-entropy estimation techniques to construct the underlying data base for a computable general equilibrium model (CGE) of the North Korean economy, starting from incomplete data ridden with gross measurement errors. The cross-entropy estimation approach is powerful and...

In this paper we examine three issues. The first is the path of China's nominal and real exchange rates since 1990. As it turns out, this is more complicated than is commonly assumed, with basic results exhibiting sensitivity to the exchange rate measure used. We conclude that while China did...

During the last decade the US government has taken numerous bilateral actions intended to reduce other countries' border or internal regulations that were said to restrict US exports, investments, and property rights. Judging from the data for 1994-1993, USTR paid attention to countries with...

Since the inception of economic reforms in 1979, China's economic performance has been nothing short of spectacular. Between 1979 and 1994, China's real growth rate has averaged more than 9 percent annually. Agriculture has been decollectivized, the management of state-controlled firms has been...

As non-tariff forms of trade protection proliferate it has become more difficult to analyze the impact of trade policy on trade flows. In a number of well-known papers researchers have attempted to infer the impact of trade policy indirectly by ascribing to trade policy the differences between...

The World Bank began this decade talking of Asian miracles. It may enter the next one speaking of Asian depressions. After World Bank Vice President for Asia Jean-Michel Severino used the "d" word in May to describe the course of events in developing Asia, the organization was forced to come up...

In this paper we start from incomplete data ridden with gross measurement errors to construct the underlying data base for a computable general equilibrium model (CGE) of the North Korean economy using cross-entropy estimation techniques. This model incorporates fragmentary information in a...