We examine the profile of poverty and vulnerability in Tajikistan using household level panel data for 2004 and 2005. The drop in poverty was largely due to increase in remittances from workers working overseas. People are more likely to be poor if they live in a) rural areas, b) large...

Using the Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) method this paper surveys the effect of monetary and exchange rate policies on Tajikistan’s economy for the period 1996 to 2004. A number of restrictions are imposed and the contemporaneous and long-run restrictions model are used to identify...

Does foreign aid contribute to economic growth? If so, is the impact of aid conditional on good policies? This is a controversial issue. While the World Bank (1998) contends that the aid is effective only if recipient governments have good policies, others refute this view and argue that aid...

This empirical study examines the impact of agricultural reforms on the cotton sector of Tajikistan. It investigates the level and determinants of technical efficiency for a sample of cotton growing regions in Tajikistan. Using unbalanced panel data of 11-years covering the transition period...

This paper makes three principal claims with respect to the economic performance of 14 Forum Island Countries (FICs) over the decade to 2005. First, the FICs (as a group) have performed below their potential. Second, it is the poor policy-choices rather than the handicaps of smallness and...

Theoretical studies suggest that corruption may counteract government failure and promote economic growth in the short run, given exogenously determined sub optimal bureaucratic rules and regulations. As the government failure is itself a function of corruption, however, corruption should have...

The paper explains the large differences in cross-country productivity performance by modeling and testing the effects of social barriers to communication on productivity and capital accumulation. In an optimal growth model, social barriers to communication that impede the formation of knowledge...

The paper analyses the economic payoffs from marine reserves using a stochastic optimal control model. The results show that even if the reserve and harvested populations face the same negative shocks, harvesting is optimal, the population is persistent and with no uncertainty over current stock...

Using data from what was once one of the world’s largest capture fisheries the economic value of a marine reserve is calculated using a stochastic optimal control model with a jump diffusion process. The results show that with a stochastic environment an optimal-sized marine reserve can...