Restrictive practices may prevent developing country seaports from benefiting from investments in containerization and bulk handling. Port loan appraisals should assess the changes needed in labor arrangements and organization-- and estimate compensation payments needed for displaced workers.

Containerized shipping has brought profound changes to maritime transport, including a shift from labor-intensive to more capital-intensive activities. Revising the traditional organization of seaports everywhere will prepare ports for a more competitive market and less financial dependence on governments.

When lenders participate voluntarily in a buyback of debt claims, both the price paid for repurchased claims and the secondary market price of the remaining debt rise-- so all creditors realize a net benefit. In contrast, the menu approach to debt reduction allows the debtor to reduce its debt at cheaper prices.

Favorable initial conditions, a timely adjustment program, and associated gains to the rural sector allowed Indonesia to maintain the momentum of its progress in poverty alleviation during the difficult 1980s.

Disinflation programs in chronic inflation countries do not normally follow the usual Phillips curve tradeoff in the medium run. Instead of having a sharp recession in the early stage of stabilization, there often is an initial expansion of output followed by a recession and balance of payments difficulties. This pattern is related to programs that use the exchange rate as an instrument of disinflation.

With foreign capital funds dwindling, governments in many developing countries-- with increased Bank support-- are looking to develop capital markets to provide risk capital for the corporate sector. But first, some basic issues must be empirically explored.

Making it difficult for a (recruiting) firm to know how much a worker has been trained increases a (training) firm's incentive to offer workers general training. Both minimum wage legislation and training certification discourage on- the- job- training.

This paper presents an analysis of the theoretical underpinnings and the relevance of the phenomenon of financial repression from a public-finance perspective. The analysis explicitly accounts for the interaction between capital controls and financial repression. The proposed empirical estimate of the revenue from financial repression is based on the difference between the domestic and the foreign cost of borrowing of the government. The correlations of the revenue from financial repression with inflation, exchange rates and per-capita income are discussed.