This paper examines the relationship between openness and within-country regional inequality across 28 countries over the period 1975-2005, paying special attention to whether increases in global trade affect the developed and developing world differently. Using a combination of static and...

For decades, agricultural price and trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa have hampered farmers’ contributions to economic growth and poverty reduction. Although there has been much policy reform over the past two decades, the injections of agricultural development funding, together with...

This paper investigates whether the Pesticides Initiative Program has significantly affected the export performance of Senegal'shorticulture industry. The authors apply two main microeconometric techniques, difference-in-differences and matching difference-in-differences, to identify the effect...

Food price inflation in Brazil in the twelve months to June 2008 was 18 percent, while overall inflation was seven percent. Using spatially disaggregated monthly data on consumer prices and two different household surveys, we estimate the welfare consequences of these food price increases, and...

Using a new tax database for 28 countries and a variety of econometric methods, this paper contributes to the debate on the effects of fiscal policy on economic activity in a number of ways. The analysis finds that tax cuts have a stimulative effect on economic growth in developing countries....

Did the North American Free Trade Agreement make Mexican firms more productive? If so, through which channels? This paper addresses these questions by deploying an innovative microeconometric approach that disentangles the various channels through which integration with the global markets (via...

Mobile banking is growing at a remarkable speed around the world. In the process it is creating considerable uncertainty about the appropriate regulatory response to this newly emerging service. This paper sets out a framework for considering the design of regulation of mobile banking. Since it...

Traditional weighted-average measures of trade distortions are widely used in analyzing global and regional reforms, despite well-known deficiencies. This paper develops and applies optimal aggregators for the real-world case of multiple countries and commodities with much more detailed...

This paper develops an innovative 21 sector computable general equilibrium model of Armenia to assess the impact on Armenia of a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union, as well as further regional or multilateral trade policy commitments. The analysis finds that such...

Following an 8-year long dispute over cotton subsidies, Brazil and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding on April 21, 2010, effectively paving the way for settling the dispute. This paper argues that cotton subsidies are just the tip of the iceberg while a number of other,...