The author investigates market power and the distribution of rents in the market for Mexico's exports of apparel tothe United States under the Multi - Fibre Arrangement (MFA). Conventional wisdom holds that voluntary restraints, such as those under the MFA, are superior to other kinds of trade...

Many countries have been affected by food and oil price shocks. Rising energy costs have manifested themselves through higher prices of gas at the pump and through price increases for many other goods such as kerosene and transport. But in some countries there has also been some degree of...

The valuation of enterprises has been a major stumbling block to privatization in transitional economies. Data on the performance of state-owned enterprises under central planning is plentiful, but that information is not worth much in a market economy, especially one in which much progress has...

A wave of privatization is sweeping the globe, affecting about 100 countries and adding up to an average of more than $60 billion a year in business in the past decade. The challenge is to ensure that privatization yields clear benefits. Empirical studies suggest that ownership change by itself...

The authors address two questions: What happens to stock market size, liquidity, volatility, and integration with world capital markets after capital controls are liberalized? And what is the relationship between those indicators of stock market development and regulations about information...

The authors analyze the tax system in China, where reforms designed to move the economic system toward a market economy have been occurring for more than a decade. The authors characterize the comprehensive changes in the tax system that could be undertaken in the presence of system-wide reform,...

Available estimates of tariff equivalents of quotas and welfare calculations on the costs of multi-fibre arrangements (MFA) for developing countries are based on the premise of perfect competition in both product and license markets. It is also assumed that the exporting countries that...

Cote d'Ivoire represents an ideal opportunity for a case study of the effects of fiscal policy in a developing country with a fixed exchange rate. For the last 15 years, the growth of the Ivorian economy has been dramatically affected by both exogenous factors and the responses of fiscal policy....

The authors provide a general equilibrium model for analyzing the mechanisms by which macroeconomic, trade, price, and exchange rate policies affect agricultural export sectors. They estimate the model empirically for Tanzania and Malawi to measure the supply responses of agricultural...

This report is part of an attempt to model the global markets for primary commodities and to use these models for forecasting purposes as well as for policy analysis. In a free market, domestic prices on agricultural products could be expected to vary with world prices. But intervention is so...