Policies designed to address the regional adding- up problem in Sub-Saharan Africa -- such as a region- optimal export tax -- generate unequal benefits among countries. Further, few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have sufficient market power to influence commodity prices in the long run. Export taxes may prove beneficial for some countries but, at certain levels, transfer resources from smallholders to government with limited welfare gains.

Structural adjustment loans in Kenya have supported trade liberalization, exchange rate depreciation, and, to some extent, export development. But World Bank funds may have helped Kenya postpone critical reform of the civil service and social sectors and divestiture of parastatals.

The effectiveness of banks in the transition depends on how soon authorities begin to restructure the banking system and how that restructuring fits into the sequence with enterprise restructuring and privatization.

Stabilization of inflation during Russia's macroeconomic crisis will be a race between the authorities' willingmess and ability to tighten monetary and fiscal policy and the adjustment of enterprises and households to existing inflation.