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Past breakthroughs in communication technology—the invention of the printing press and the telegraph—led to major economic upheavals. What are the implications of the more recent information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the developing world? Optimists believe that modern ICTs will allow developing countries to catch up with the developed world, while pessimists claim that the growing digital divide will reinforce economic divergence. One significant lesson from history is that mere access to new technology is not sufficient for economic transformation. The presence of so-called network effects makes the outcome sensitive to patterns of demand and usage of new technologies. This may make a case for demand-side initiatives, include government sponsorship of, and direct participation in, new technologies. The paper uses examples to highlight the key issues and specify some policy conclusions. – ICT ; developing countries

Abstract Altruism or 'regard for others' can encourage self‐restraint among generators of negative externalities, thereby mitigating the externality problem. We explore how introducing impure altruism into standard regulatory settings alters regulatory prescriptions. The optimal calibration of both quantitative controls and externality taxes is affected. It also leads to surprising results on the comparative performance of instruments. Under quantity‐based regulation, welfare is increasing in the propensity for altruism in the population; under price‐based regulation, the relationship is non‐monotonic. Price‐based regulation is preferred when the population is either predominantly altruistic or predominantly selfish; quantity‐based regulation is preferred for cases in between.

We show that cross-country differences in the underlying volatility and persistence of macroeconomic shocks help explain two historical regularities in sovereign borrowing: the existence of ""vicious"" circles of borrowing-and-default (""default traps""), as well as the fact that recalcitrant sovereigns typically face higher interest spreads on future loans rather than outright market exclusion. We do so in a simple model where output persistence is coupled with asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders about the borrower's output process, implying that a decision to default reveals