Civil war, and genocide in particular, are among the most destructive of social phenomena, especially for children of school-going age. In Rwanda school enrollment trends suggest that the school system recovered quickly after 1994, but these numbers do not tell the full story. Two...

After surveying the facts and distilling the voluminous literature on the transition to market economies, the author arrives at several conclusions: with hindsight, the old debate - Big Bang versus gradualism - was really a problem of feasibility, although many of the arguments in favor of the...

Many economies of the former Soviet Union have experienced cash shortages: people with demand and savings deposits in the banking system are unable to convert them into currency. Usually this is attributed to the common use of the ruble. The author argues otherwise. According to him: (a) cash...

Telecommunications was the first network utility to be privatized in the United Kingdom. Drawing on 15 years'experience and discussion in the field, the author shows the economic principles of regulation in general and access pricing in particular that have been implemented. British...

The agricultural transition is an essential part of stabilization and adjustment in Eastern and Central Europe because agricultural sectors are large and food is important. The supply response that many within and outside the region expected to emerge early and expeditiously is complicated by...

One of the central predictions of growth theory, old and new, is that income taxes have a negative effect on the pace of economic expansion. Little empirical work has been done on the topic because of the difficulty of measuring the relevant marginal tax rates. Easterly and Rebelo experiment...

Teams from two institutions studied the economic impact of health status on productivity and income. They studied whether onchocercal skin disease caused economic damage to the labor force at a coffee plantation in southwest Ethiopia, and how much. The research team estimated the daily wage...

The authors explore how Korea's financial structure affects the volatility of asset prices. Documented empirical evidence of the relationship between financial structure and financial crisis, sheds light on the relationship between asset price volatility - extreme variations in price - and...

Using data collected in a survey on risk, and social insurance in Chile, the author funds that workers who entered the labor market after the pension reform of 1981, have a greater"contribution density"than those who contributed to the previous social security system. Further, the expectation of...

Some economists have urged reliance on fuel taxes and other fiscal incentives to reduce air pollution in semi-industrialized countries. They argue that policies that act on relative prices are easier to enforce than those based on emission monitoring, create less misallocation of resources, and...