Despite the widespread tariff reductions
sparked by the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade
Agreement, borders in the region remain thick, with many
hurdles standing in the way of regional trade. Although
anecdotal evidence suggests that nontariff measures raise
trade costs and inhibit trade in the region, little is known
about the magnitude of these economic effects. This paper
uses a newly collected data set to quantify the incidence of

This book is organized as follows: this
first chapter examines the pattern of structural
transformation in Middle East and North Africa, or MENA and
summarizes the role of various factors examined thoroughly
in the rest of the volume. This second chapter examines the
correlates of this overall disappointing performance. At the
macro level, MENA countries have been unable to maintain
depreciated (undervalued) real exchange rates for long

The report has four main parts. In the
first, the commission reviews the 13 economies that have
sustained, high growth in the postwar period. Their growth
models had some common flavors: the strategic integration
with the world economy; the mobility of resources,
particularly labor; the high savings and investment rates;
and a capable government committed to growth. The report
goes on to describe the cast of mind and techniques of

This report provides tentative leads
toward such policy prescriptions, based on an overview of
the empirical evidence. Chapter one sets the stage by
putting Africa's export-survival performance into
perspective and proposing a framework that will guide the
interpretation of empirical evidence throughout the report.
Chapter two covers country-level determinants of export
sustainability at origin and destination, including the

Burkina Faso's Poverty Reduction
Strategies (PRS) of the 2000s, which were implemented as
annually rolled-over Priority Action Programs, focused on
four pillars: a) accelerating broad based growth; b)
expanding access to social services for the poor; c)
increasing employment and income-generating activities for
the poor; and d) promoting good governance. Increased public
expenditure and targeted social service provision also led

The impacts of climate change on
agriculture are projected to be significant in coming
decades, so response strategies, and their likely costs,
should be evaluated now. That is why this study produced an
open-access, crop-climate-economic impact modeling platform
for Latin America and the Caribbean, that can be extended to
other regions, then modified and improved by users as new
crop, climate, and economic datasets become available. The

Although transfer of agricultural land
ownership through land reform had positive impacts on
productivity, investment, and political empowerment in many
cases, institutional arrangements in West Bengal -- which
made tenancy heritable and imposed a prohibition on
subleasing -- imply that early land reform benefits may not
be sustained and gains from this policy remain well below
potential. Data from a listing of 96,000 households in 200

Niger, owing to its climatic,
institutional, livelihood, economic, and environmental
context, is one of the most vulnerable countries of the
world. Poverty is pervasive in Niger and it ranks low on
almost all the human development indicators. Agriculture is
the most important sector of Niger's economy and
accounts for over 40 percent of national gross domestic
product (GDP) and is the principle source of livelihood for

The agricultural and food sector is an
ideal case for investigating the political economy of public
policies. Many of the policy developments in this sector
since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational, while
others have been gradual but persistent. This paper reviews
and synthesizes the literature on trends and fluctuations in
market distortions and the political-economy explanations
that have been advanced. Based on a rich global data set

One area of weakness in current
agricultural policy work in Vietnam is the lack of a clear
understanding of both the private profitability of farmers
for different crop activities and the social profitability
of such activities. Agricultural performance is thus gauged
in physical terms (i.e. yields and the volume of aggregate
output) rather than in financial or economic terms. This has
hampered efforts to compare and contrast the impacts and

Inappropriate regulation can influence
productivity performance by affecting incentives to invest
and adopt new technologies, as well as by directly curbing
competitive pressures. Results of a labor productivity
growth model for European countries suggest that improving
the regulatory environment -- proxied by the Worldwide
Governance Indicators regulatory quality indicator -- and
boosting effective exposure to competition through

Reduction of carbon emissions from
deforestation and forest degradation has been identified as
a cost effective element of the post-Kyoto strategy to
achieve long-term climate objectives. Its success depends
primarily on the design and implementation of a financial
mechanism that provides land-holders sufficient incentives
to participate in such scheme. This paper proposes
self-enforcing contracts (relational contracts) as a