Working Paper
Entrepreneurship and Proprietorship in Transition
In this paper, the role of small and medium size enterprises in the economic transformation of the countries of Central Europe is assessed. It argues that although these fulfil an important role, they are less significant as agents of macroeconomic...
Working Paper
The Evolutionary Dynamics of China's Small- and Medium- Sized enterprises in the 1990s
Since 1992 a series of radical and successful reforms of their ownership and governance structures have been conducted by China's small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Innovative arrangements such as 'joint-stock co-operatives', 'joint-stock...
Working Paper
State-Owned versus Township and Village Enterprises in China
This study presents an up-to-date survey of the comparison issue between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and township and village enterprises (TVEs) in China. Although TVEs are disadvantaged in areas such as technology, labour skills, education levels...
Working Paper
Decentralized Socialism and Macroeconomic Stability
Using a survey of 300 state-owned enterprises (SOEs), we argue that the acceleration of inflation in China after 1984 was caused by the decentralization reforms in the state sector. These reforms allowed the SOEs to realize their innate tendencies to...
Working Paper
A Natural Experiment of Industrial Policy
Ethiopia represents an excellent case study of recent industrial policy experimentation in Africa. The country is well known for its successful promotion of the cut-flower industry through business-government co-ordination. What is less known is that...
Working Paper
Does a Switch of Budget Regimes Constrain Managerial Discretion?
This study examines the effect of the hardening of the budget constraint on the investment behaviour of Italian state owned enterprises (SOEs). It carries out a natural experiment that exploits the 1987 shift of budget regimes due to the pressure of...
Working Paper
Entrepreneurship, Stages of Development, and Industrialization
Unlike in the past where industrial policy was either focused on creation and growth of state-owned firms or alternatively consisted merely of broadly functional policies without consideration for firm or entrepreneurial specifics, the requirement...
Working Paper
Rethinking China’s Path of Industrialization
This study shows that China’s post-1949 state-led industrialization has closely followed an underlying path that began in the late nineteenth century. It was initiated by pressing national defence needs and has since been motivated by the same and...
Working Paper
The Political Economy of Industrial Development in Vietnam
Vietnam’s industrial development since doi moi is a success, but only a partial one. This paper provides a political economy account of Vietnam’s industrial growth since 1986. It shows that the key determinant of Vietnam’s industrial growth lies in...
Working Paper
Privatization in Sub-Saharan Africa
Although privatization has been a key feature of economic policy in Africa since the early 1990s its sequencing and intensity have varied from country to country, with donor leverage being an important determinant of the pace of implementation...
Working Paper
From the Grabbing Hand to the Helping Hand
I present a study of ownership of firms under government rent seeking. Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such a government rent seeking activity leads to a typical...
Working Paper
Hardening a Soft Budget Constraint Through 'Upward Devolution' to a Supranational Institution
This paper contributes to the literature on the role of decentralization in hardening the budget constraint of public enterprises. Following Qian and Roland the study adopts a ‘federalist’ approach. However, it interprets federalism as the upward...
Working Paper
Who Really Leads Development?
‘Leadership’ is not a common topic for research in international development. In recent years, however, prominent studies like the 2008 Growth Commission Report noted the importance of leadership in development. This and other studies focused on...