Protagonists in the 1980s' debate on equity and growth in Sri Lanka claimed to show that economic liberalization could deliver growth without jeopardizing equity, and the main lesson that they drew from the Sri Lankan experience - that welfarism should be abandoned - helped to reinforce...

The proposition that liberalization improves productivity growth is examined using data from Nepalese manufacturing-a least developed country that implemented trade liberalization during the 1980s. Productivity growth in general was negative in both the preand post-liberalization periods, but a...