Cross-Border Trade and the Parallel Currency Market - Trade and Finance in the Context of Structural Adjustment

The authors of this study challenge the assumptions of the World Bank that the expansion in informal cross-border trade is a vindication of the market-liberalizing thrust of structural adjustment, and that adjustment policies have improved the effectiveness of an "independent" bourgeoisie that is emerging out of this trade as an agent of regional integration. Instead, they make the case for the adoption of what they call a "development approach" for tapping the benefits of the informal currency markets, as an alternative to the "market coercion" of structural adjustment.