This paper provides new empirical evidence to the debate on the optimal locus of power over environmental policymaking in developing countries. The authors develop a simple lobby group model with mobile capital. The model predicts that a decentralized institutional structure leads to weaker...

In many cases, the relationship between environmental pollution and economic development can be generally depicted by an inverted U-shaped curve, or an environmental Kuznets curve, where pollution increases with income at the beginning and decreases after a certain level of income. However, what...

This paper analyzes the scale and productivity consequences of varied input use in Indian manufacturing using detailed plant-level data. Counts of distinct material inputs are higher in urban settings than in rural locations, unconditionally and conditional on plant size, and they are also...

This paper shows how the industrial structure and performance changed after Chile's dramatic trade liberalization. A comparison of the 1967 and 1979 censuses shows little improvement in productivity overall, but these figures don't separate the effects of trade liberalization from the effects of...

How to address the link between environmental regulation and trade was an important part of discussions at the World Trade Organization Ministerial in Doha, Qatar in November 2001. Trade ministers agreed to launch negotiations on trade and the environment, specifically clarification of WTO...

Most literature suggests that voluntary export restraints (VER) are not very harmful for the exporting country. This paper argues that this view is misconceived. Most work has focused on the welfare loss to the importing country arising from a loss of income transfer combined with a...

Has the revival of the Andean Pact affected the industrial growth of Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador? Has this regional agreement had greater effects tha unilateral liberalization? The author explores two potential channels for industrial growth: scale effects and variety of imported intermediate...

How does economic geography influence industrial production and thereby affect industrial location decisions and the spatial distribution of development? For manufacturing industry, what are the externalities that matter, and to what extent? Are these externalities spatially localized? The...

Business cycles are less volatile in rich countries than in poor ones. They are also more synchronized with the world cycle. The authors develop two alternative but noncompeting explanations for those facts. Both explanations proceed from the observation that the law of comparative advantage...

Productivity, and the Rybczynski effects of factor endowments, have been highlighted as the two main reasons behind the growth of newly industrializing economies in East Asia. However, empirical studies at the aggregate level, do not find support for these claims. Focusing on Singapore's...