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This paper explores the relationship between competition policy, experience of the application of competition policy, the intensity of local competition and the standard of living. Perception data from the World Economic Forum is used to measure the intensity of local competition. Richer and larger countries in general introduce competition policy earlier than smaller and poorer countries, and industrialized countries earlier than Latin American, African, transition and Asian countries, in this order. A regression analysis for a sample of 101 countries reveals that experience and overall government effectiveness explain a substantial part of the perception of the effectiveness of antitrust policy. During the first years of (new) competition legislation the effectiveness of application improves rapidly, whereas very old competition agencies make little further improvement of their application performance after a certain time. The effectiveness of antitrust policy has a significant influence on the intensity of local competition. The size of the economy also has a significant impact on the intensity of local competition, whereas external protection does not. These results indicate that competition legislation and experience of the application of competition legislation have a large impact on the level of competition in an economy, whereas the influence of external protection is not clear. In countries with a high intensity of local competition the standard of living is higher than in countries with a low intensity of local competition.

This paper analyses the determinants of the size of the informal economy using crosscountry regressions. Two sets of global data using indirect estimation techniques and the perception of business leaders for 109 countries as well as a regional set for Latin America based on direct data are used to estimate the size of the informal economies. Indirect estimation techniques arrive at higher estimates of the size of the informal economy than the perceptions of business leaders because they include not only the (fundamentally legal) activities of the informal sector, but also those activities which are illegal per se. Both kinds of estimate show strong regional differences in the size of the informal economies. Regressions on a set of indicators covering the intensity of regulations, taxes and the cost of establishing a business reveal that the intensity of labour regulations seems to be the most important factor in explaining the size of the informal economy in cross-country regressions using the rational behaviour approach. Socio-cultural indicators are only important in explaining the size of the informal economies in Latin America. Government efficiency is an important factor in explaining the size of the informal economy in world regressions. Regional regressions reveal that different aspects of governance dominate the relationship between government efficiency and the size of the informal economy in the different regions. Governments that seek to limit or decrease the size of the informal economy must therefore start from a country-specific analysis of the reasons why economic agents choose to conduct their business in the informal sector.

In der vorliegenden Studie wird der Poverty - Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) - Prozess im Falle Nicaraguas dargestellt und bewertet. Dafür wird die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung des Landes skizziert und Engpässe in der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung aufgezeigt. Anschließend wird bewertet, ob die im PRSP angekündigten Maßnahmen geeignet sind, diese Engpässe zu beseitigen. Um zu bewerten, ob die Ergebnisse der Politik gut oder schlecht sind, werden Entwicklungen in anderen Ländern herangezogen. Zwei Ländergruppen bieten sich hier als Vergleichsmaßstab an: Die Gruppe der low-income Länder und die Gruppe der Länder Lateinamerikas und der Karibik. Zu beiden Gruppen zählt Nicaragua; da in der Gruppe der Länder Lateinamerikas und der Karibik außer Nicaragua nur noch ein weiteres low-income Land existiert, bietet es sich nicht an, regionale Gruppierung und Einkommensgruppierung zu kombinieren. Für die Beurteilung der Politikmaßnahmen in Nicaragua wird ein "Structural Reform Index" für Nicaragua berechnet und mit den Ergebnissen für Lateinamerika insgesamt verglichen. Es zeigt sich, dass Nicaragua im Vergleich zu den anderen lateinamerikanischen Ländern relativ früh mit der Liberalisierung der Finanzmärkte begonnen hat, die mit Privatisierungen in diesem Bereich verbunden war und über einen vergleichsweise liberalen Arbeitsmarkt verfügt.

The international development debate has undergone significant changes during the last decade. The so-called Washington consensus, often described as a focus on macroeconomic adjustment and stabilization policies, has been extended to include a new approach of institution building. Although most developing economies in fact did quite well in terms of macroeconomic stabilization, progress on poverty reduction was judged to be disappointing. The Eighties left a legacy of high levels of indebtedness, and throughout the Nineties one international initiative after another tried to resolve or at least alleviate this problem. When developing countries and international financial institutions agreed on economic policy reforms in the context of loan agreements, it was often felt that the governments lacked real commitment, which was explained by their lack of "ownership." One of the new instruments to have emerged from the international policy debate is the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. This new instrument pursues three objectives: (1) Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers must be drawn up by the governments concerned in a participatory process, intended to assure national consensus and ownership. (2) It is hoped that the explicit focus on poverty reduction will improve results in this area. (3) And if the international community accepts a country's PRSP, a high percentage of outstanding debt will be written off by bilateral and multilateral donors within the HIPC (highly indebted poor countries) initiative.