JULY/AUGUST 2003 75 Bekaert, Harvey, and Lundblad (BHL) are to be congratulated for producing another paper on equity market liberalizations in emerging markets, and it is a pleasure to discuss their work. Yet, there are three reasons why I may not be an impartial discussant: (i) Having devoted most of my fledgling career to the study of capital account liberalization in emerging markets, I am ...

This paper pulls together existing theory and evidence to assess whether international financial liberalization, by improving the functioning of domestic financial markets and banks, accelerates economic growth. The analysis suggests that the answer is “yes.” First, liberalizing restrictions on international portfolio flows tends to enhance stock market liquidity. In turn, enhanced stock market...

This paper explores the effects of general and agricultural trade openness on economic freedom and alongside with the quality of institutions, on income and poverty. Recent cross-country data for over 200 nations in global regions were used to estimate equations for income, poverty and economic freedom. Economic freedom appears to have positive impacts on income levels, which together with good...

The world has witnessed an unparalleled increase in trade liberalization over the last few decades. These have been accompanied by increasing concerns over economic growth and distributional impacts emerging from trade agreements. An applied literature has emerged to address ex-ante effects at both macroeconomic and household levels. This article contributes to this literature by analyzing the ...

Angola’s difficulties in achieving macro-economic stability and economic liberalization have serious implications for private-sector development. Hyperinflation, and frequent policy reversal, constrain and distort investment in both the informal and formal parts of the private sector. But macro-economic instability arises in part out of mechanisms that subsidize powerful oligopolies, enabling t...