Public provision of education has often been perceived as universal and egalitarian, but in reality it is not. Political pressure typically results in incidence bias in favor of the rich. The author argues that the bias in political influence resulting from extreme income inequalities is...

As a result of trade reforms in the 1980s and 1990s Latin American and Caribbean countries became more open than at any time since World War II. However, these countries have recently begun to use antidumping measures as the new protection weapon of choice, as other barriers to trade have been...

Labor market integration is typically assumed to improve welfare in the absence of distortions, because it allows labor to move to where returns are highest. The author examines this result in a simple general equilibrium model in the presence of a common property resource: social capital....

In designing a rational scheme for subsidizing water services, it is important to support the choice of design parameters with empirical analysis that stimulates the impact of subsidy options on the target population. Otherwise, there is little guarantee that the subsidy program will meet its...

The authors document the vast expansion of schooling over the past several decades, as well as convergence in schooling measures across countries. They make the observation that poor countries today have higher average education levels than countries at the same level of economic development had...

To bridge the gap between case studies and highly aggregate cross-country analyses of civil unrest, the author uses data from Uganda to explore determinants of civil strife (as contrasted to theft and physical violence) at the community level, as well as the potentially differential impact of...

The authors use a computable general equilibrium model of the Russian economy to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which encompasses improved market access, tariff reduction, and reduction of barriers against multinational service providers. They assume that...

The authors examine the effects on national welfare and market access of two public procurement practices-discrimination against foreign suppliers of goods and services and nontransparency of the procedures used to allocate government contracts to firms. Both types of policies have become...

By explicitly accounting for the interaction between importers and corrupt customs officials, the author argues that setting trade tariff rates at a uniform level, limits public official's ability to extract bribes from importers. If the government's main objective is to raise revenues at the...

The link between economic growth, and better provision of infrastructure services may be unproven, but it is clear that reforms to make infrastructure services more competitive (where possible), and to provide strong, and independent economic regulation of natural monopolies, do create an...