DIAL

Instead of presenting a topical issue or document as we did in our previous issues of Dialogue, we chose in this third issue to reflect on the analysis tools available for economists working in developing countries, more specifically the computable general equilibrium models. These models, which have been increasingly used over the last few years, nowadays constitute a flexible tool at the disposal of short-term forecasters, planners and, more generally, of all the analysts who have to propose orientations of economic policy to the decision-makers of these countries. We accordingly thought a synthetic presentation of these models might be useful.

An other, shorter article in this issue is devoted to a few questions that the World Summit for Social Development addressed -or failed to address - to the economists and leaders of the developing world. Finally, we briefly present a few recent activities of DIAL: the Madio project in Madagascar, and our participation in various conferences and training sessions.

DIAL has tried, over the last few months, to streamline its publications. Two different types of publications have been accordingly created: the Documents de Travail DIAL (Working Papers),mostly for internal use, and the Etudes DIAL (Studies), to be distributed more widely outside our institution. Distinct screening committees have been set up, to enforce the necessary strictness in the selection for each of these categories of publications. We take the opportunity of this mailing to send you the list of our Etudes, as well as - for all intents and purposes - that of our Documents de Travail.