This paper discusses the key regulatory, market and political failures that led to the 2008-2009 United States financial crisis. While Congress was fixing the Savings and Loan crisis, it failed to give the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac normal bank supervisory power. This was a...

The twelve members of the Commonwealth of Independent States established a Free Trade Area to help maintain trade among each other. More recently, Belarus, Kazakstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Russia agreed, in principle, to establish a Customs Union (CU). The paper concludes that the dynamic...

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...

Export restraints by the Russian Federation on natural gas and timber have been the source of major controversy between the European Union and the Russian Federation. The analysis of this paper suggests that the export restraints in natural gas very substantially benefit Russia. On the other...

Using a multi-region CGE model, we evaluate the regional, multilateral and unilateral trade policy options of MERCOSUR from the perspective of the welfare of all potential partners. In Brazil, we focus on poverty impacts. We find that the poorest households in Brazil experience percentage gains...

In World Trade Organization (WTO) accession negotiations, telecommunications is always a sector that receives close scrutiny by the WTO Working Party, and the extent of market access and nondiscriminatory treatment of multinational telecommunications companies in Russia has been a significant...

The accession negotiations of Belarus to the WTO are unusual since, due to its obligations in the Eurasian Economic Union, WTO accession is not expected to impact its tariffs or formerly substantial trade distorting agricultural subsidies. Nonetheless, we estimate that WTO accession will...

Despite economic theory and empirical literature that have shown that wide availability of business services contributes significantly to productivity gains and growth, economic modelers have been slow to meaningfully incorporate services into their models. This paper employs a 52-sector, small,...

A multi-region computable general equilibrium model is used to evaluate the regional, multilateral, and unilateral trade policy options of Mercosur from the perspective of the welfare of all potential partners in several proposed agreements. The focus for Brazil is on poverty impacts. The...