This paper estimates the output, investment, employment and wage effect of institutional credit using district-level panel data from India. Using a two-stage model to distinguish demand for formal credit from supply, the authors conclude that increased formal credit has a positive effect on crop...

India has systematically pursued a supply-led approach to increasing agriculturalcredit. Its objectives have been to replace moneylenders, to relieve farmers of indebtedness, and to achieve higher levels of agricultural credit, investment, and output. India's success in replacing moneylenders...

The authors use Mexican agriculture as a case study to analyze the transition problems that arise in most major economic reforms. They focus on the implications for policy design of the absence of efficient capital markets; on the welfare costs of reforming only gradually; on incentive problems...

Interventions in this small impoverished West African nation have been based mainly on credit ( debt ). Public and private lending institutions have failed dramatically, with the resultant mounting debts. Yet, lenders continue extending loans into the countryside. The author suggests that there...

Government involvement in Pakistan's agriculture sector has benefited farmers little, contends the author. He recommends reform of agricultural policies and institutions. For one thing, government policy has severely distorted agricultural incentives -- directly, through agricultural pricing...

The authors empirically study factors that influence public investment in transportation and communication infrastructure. Using data for 1980-86 for 27 economies, they assess the influence of government objectives, the nature of the domestic economy, and the external assistance flow on public...

There is widespread concern across Latin America that the provision of infrastructure services has suffered as a consequence of the retrenchment of the public sector and the insufficient response of the private sector to the opening up of infrastructure industries to private participation in...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has had a profound impact on Mexico's economy and institutions. Clearly, no consideration of tax reform can ignore its role. The thinking about tax reform in Mexico requires evaluating NAFTA's effect on Mexico's economy, including its tax...

The authors use a large panel data set from Zambia to examine factors that could explain the relatively lackluster performance of the country's agricultural sector after liberalization. Zambia's liberalization significantly opened the economy but failed to alter the structure of productionor...

The authors review the role of land policies in the evolving farm structure of transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). They show how different policies for land property rights, degrees of control of land rental and sale markets,...