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The Dominican Republic (DR) has committed itself to work towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Recent data indicate that the DR has made considerable progress on the MDGs but that an acceleration of efforts is needed for the country to reach all the goals.2 This chapter focuses on two key questions: Will the DR achieve all of the MDGs under current policies and trends? If not, what policy changes are needed to achieve the MDGs and at what cost? The second question incorporates alternative assumptions about the sources (domestic or foreign) of required additional government financing. We address these questions using MAMS (MAquette for MDG Simulations3), a dynamic-recursive computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for country strategy analysis, and a micro-simulation model. Such an economywide approach is needed given that the simulated policy changes have strong effects throughout the economy. Section 1 below provides background on the general economy and MDGs since 1990. Section 2 presents our methods and database, and Section 3 the simulations and an analysis of their results. Section 4 concludes with a summary of our main findings. ; Trabajo publicado en Vos, R.; Ganuza, E.; Lofgren, H.; Sánchez, M. V. y Diaz-Bonilla, C. (eds.). Políticas públicas para el desarrollo humano . UQBAR, Santiago, Chile. ; Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)

Using the most recent estimates of agricultural price distortions, this chapter studies the economic, poverty, and income inequality impacts of both global and domestic trade reform in Argentina, with a special focus on export taxes. Argentina offers an interesting case study as the only large agricultural exporter that has, at many points in its history, applied export taxes to several of its agricultural products. The chapter combines results from a global economy-wide model (World Bank's linkage model), a national computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, and micro-simulations. The results suggest that liberalization of world trade (including subsidies and import taxes, but not export taxes), both for agricultural and non-agricultural goods, reduces poverty and inequality in Argentina. However, if only agricultural goods are included, indicators for poverty and inequality do not improve and even deteriorate somewhat. This is particularly the case if export taxes are eliminated. The chapter discusses the possible reasons for those results, offers some caveats, and suggests some lines for further research.