Ana Revenga

Employment and Wage Effects of Trade Liberalization: The Case of Mexican Manufacturing

This article analyzes the effect of trade liberalization on employment and wages in the Mexican manufacturing sector. The study documents that many of the rents generated by trade protection were absorbed by workers in the form of a wage premium. Trade liberalization affected firm‐level employment and wages by shifting down industry product and labor demand. This in itself may have accounted for a 3%–4% decline in real wages on average. But trade reform also reduced the rents available to be captured by firms and workers. This had an additional negative effect on firm‐level employment and wages.

Exporting Jobs?The Impact of Import Competition on Employment and Wages in U. S. Manufacturing

This paper investigates the effect of increased import competition on U. S. manufacturing employment and wages, using data for a panel of manufacturing industries over the 1977–1987 period. The empirical analysis uses previously unavailable industry import price data and an instrumental variables estimation strategy. The estimates suggest that changes in import prices have a significant effect on both employment and wages. The dramatic appreciation of the dollar between 1980 and 1985 is estimated to have reduced wages by 2 percent, and employment by 4.5–7.5 percent on average in this sample of trade-impacted industries.

Rising Food Prices

A review of the best policy interventions to respond to food price increases in local markets.

The economics of effective AIDS treatment : evaluating policy options for Thailand

The purpose of this report is to advise the Thai government and Thai society at large about the full range of benefits, costs, and consequences that are likely to result from the decision to expand public provision of antiretroviral therapy (ART) through National Access to Antiretroviral Program for People Living with HIV/AIDS (NAPHA) and to assist with the design of implementation policies that will achieve maximum treatment benefits, while promoting prevention of HIV/AIDS and maintaining financial sustainability within Thailand. The study has several significant findings: NAPHA with first-line regimen only is the most cost-effective policy option of those studied; NAPHA with second-line therapy is still affordable and yields large benefits in terms of life-years saved; policy options to enhance adherence and to recruit patients earlier are a good public investment; public financing will help ensure equitable access; public financing can strengthen positive spillovers and can limit negative spillovers of ART; if the success of ART rollout makes people or the government complacent about prevention, future costs could rise substantially; and future government expenditures on ART, and the lives it will save are highly sensitive to negotiated agreements on the intellectual property rights for pharmaceuticals. In its current form, Thailands NAPHA program is affordable. Under the models assumptions, it is also cost-effective relative to the baseline scenario. Furthermore, although the two enhanced policies we suggest early recruitment through expanded voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) and improved adherence through Person living with HIV/AIDS (PHA) groups are less cost-effective, they are still a good bargain, particularly if both are enacted.

The economics of effective AIDS treatment in Thailand

Introduction: The speed with which Thailand has scaled up public provision of antiretroviral therapy (ART) has been unprecedented, with more than 80 000 individuals on treatment at the end of 2006 through Thailands National Access to Antiretroviral Program for People Living with HIV/AIDS (NAPHA). This paper projects the cost effectiveness, the affordability and the future fiscal burden of NAPHA to the government of Thailand under several different policy scenarios until the year 2025. Methods: An economic/epidemiological model of access to ART was constructed, and this composite model was calibrated to economic and epidemiological data from Thailand and other countries. The economic model adopts the conditional logit specification of demand allocation across multiple treatment modes, and the epidemiological model is a deterministic difference-equation model fitted to the cumulated data on HIV incidence in each risk group. Results: The paper estimates that under 2005 prices NAPHA will save life-years at approximately US

A Global Count of the Extreme Poor in 2012

736 per life-year saved with first-line drugs alone and for approximately US

Women's Work

2145 per life-year if second-line drugs are included. Enhancing NAPHA with policies to recruit patients soon after they are first eligible for ART or to enhance their adherence would raise the cost per life-year saved, but the cost would be small per additional life-year saved, and is therefore justifiable. The fiscal burden of a policy including second as well as first-line drugs would be substantial, rising to 23% of the total health budget by 2014, but the authors judge this cost to be affordable given Thailands strong overall economic performance. The paper estimates that a 90% reduction in the future cost of second-line therapy by the exercise of Thailands World Trade Organization authority to issue compulsory licences would save the government approximately US

Grow, invest, insure : a game plan to end extreme poverty by 2030

3.2 billion to 2025 and reduce the cost of NAPHA per life-year saved from US

The Effects of Trade Policy Reform: What Do We Really Know?

2145 to approximately US

Poverty and Ethnicity : A Cross-Country Study of ROMA Poverty in Central Europe

940.