New technology and the liberalization of telecommunications markets are putting increasing stress on the accounting rates regime -- the system used by telecommunications carriers to settle their international traffic accounts. While operators in most countries acknowledge that the current system...

Heavily indebted low-income countries benefited from significant debt relief over the past decade. Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), assistance of about $117 billion in nominal terms had been committed to 35 HIPC as of...

The multilateral trade system rests on the principle of nondiscrimination. The most-favored-nation (MFN) clause embodied in article one of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was the defining principle for a system that emerged in the post, Second World War era, largely in reaction...

The financial crisis of 2008 has rekindled interest in sovereign debt crises among policy makers and scholars. History shows that lending booms typically end in busts, with the beneficiaries of debt in the upswing often forced to default or reschedule their debts in the downswing (Sturzenegger...

The authors look at the rise of the Internet as the main application behind the emerging global information infrastructure. Many now believe that the Internet provides a window into a future in which access to information will be independent of geographic location and interactivity in a...

In this paper, the authors explore the complex, long, and unique process of accession to the World Trade Organization, with its intertwined economic, legal, and political dimensions. Referring to country case studies and sector-specific issues, the paper organizes some of the current reflections...

In February 1997, sixty-nine governments of high-income and developing countries agreed to liberalize their basic telecommunications services under an agreement negotiated through the World Trade Organization. Most participants in the agreement have subscribed to procompetitive regulatory...