This paper introduces a large new cross-country database on political institutions: the Database on Political Institutions (DPI). The authors summarize key variables (many of them new), compare this data set with others, and explore the range of issues for which the data should prove invaluable....

Discussions of competition and regulatory reform typically focus on price and quantity effects. But improving certain infrastructure services can also stimulate entry, and competition in user industries downstream, allowing new firms to enter, incumbent users to offer new products, and rivalry...

The author surveys the literature on trade and foreign direct investment--especially wholly-owned subsidiaries of multinational firms and international joint ventures--as channels for technology transfer. He also discusses licensing and other arm's length channels of technology transfer. He...

The authors argue that India should engage more actively in the multilateral trading system for four reasons: First, such engagement could facilitate domestic reform, and improve access to export markets. If the government could show that domestic reform would pay off with increased access to...

Exporters'performance in a particular market may affect their future exports to the rest of the world. Importers may base their future transaction decision on the information revealed by exporters'past performance in other countries. Similarly, exporters acquire valuable information on foreign...

The relationship between the intensity of competition in an economy and its long-run growth is an open question in economics. Theoretically, there is no clear-cut answer. Empirical evidence exists, however, that in some sectors more competition leads to more innovation, and accelerates...

Imagine several mountain climbers, scaling a cliff face, who want protection from falling. One way to protect them would be to place a net at the bottom of the cliff to catch any climber just before he hits the ground. Another would be to provide a rope, and a set of movable devices that can be...

This paper contains abstracts of Policy Research Working Paper series Numbers 2300-2362.

The author studies a number of ways in which British regulators have helped poorer consumers. British Telecommunications offers a lower user tariff, and a very cheap service with most outgoing calls barred, to attract customers who could not afford the full service. The gas regulator has taken...

Despite a trend toward more flexible rates, more than half the world's countries maintain fixed or managed exchange rates. In the 1980s and 1990s, developing countries as a group progressively liberalized their trade regimes, but some governments defend their exchange rate in actions that run...