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Publications (35)
The issue of institutional development has come to prominence during the last decade or so. During this period, even the IMF and the World Bank, which used to treat institutions as mere 'details', have come to emphasize the role of institutions in economic development. However, there are still some...
Policy Brief
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The volume Institutional Change and Economic Development fills some important gaps in our understanding of the relationship between institutional changes and economic development. It does so by developing new discourses on the 'technology of institution building' and by providing detailed case...
Working Paper
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– Property, Politics and Development Trajectories
As institutional approaches have come to dominate the mainstream of development economics, they have outgrown earlier and simpler analyses of ‘property rights’. This paper focuses on the work of Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, which suggests that the distribution of property rights to a ‘broad...
Working Paper
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– The Successful Experience of Switzerland (1870-1950)
This research paper discusses the role of institutions in the rapid growth and successful international integration of Switzerland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In analysing the emergence and consolidation of the institutions whose existence was crucial, the paper looks...
Working Paper
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– Industrial Catching-up, Institutional Innovation and Financial Fragility
This paper seeks to explain the dynamics of Brazilian industrial catch-up in the last 60 years by discussing its background institutional conditions as well as its main macroeconomic features. After a brief introduction, the second section describes how after the institutional innovations introduced...
Working Paper
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– A Historical Perspective on Institutions and Uneven Development
This paper argues for an ‘ancient’ institutional school, predating Thorstein Veblen’s ‘old’ institutionalism. In this view, going back as far as the thirteenth century, institutions tended to be seen as specific to a mode of production. Here both institutions and development itself are context...
Working Paper
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– Development Strategies and Institutions in Taiwan and China
Conventional explanations of Taiwan and China’s economic success point to the shift from an import-substituting industrialization (ISI) strategy to an export-oriented industrialization (EOI) strategy. This paper argues that the development strategies in Taiwan and China have always been a...
Working Paper
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New institutional economics lacks a theory of state formation which could help us to deal with the mega question of why some states became more efficient than others at establishing and sustaining institutions. Some kind of middle range theory could be formulated based upon historical case studies...
Working Paper
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Taxation provides one of the principal lenses in measuring state capacity, state formation and power relations in a society. This paper critically examines three main approaches (economic, administrative and political economy) to understanding taxation. It also examines differences in tax...
Working Paper
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– A Comparative Analysis of Mauritius, Botswana and Uganda
This paper examines the relationship between institution building and economic performance in Mauritius, Botswana and Uganda. The rationale for comparing these cases is simple. While the three have been super-economic stars in their own right, they have achieved substantially different outcomes...
Working Paper
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During its development into a continental empire, the US, like other countries relied on the investment of capital and labour from abroad; unlike other countries, the US had a peculiar political institution, federalism, which channeled these resources and also determined the course of protest...
Working Paper
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The notion that good corporate governance means maximizing shareholder value derives from the neoclassical theory of the market economy. I explain why this perspective is highly problematic for understanding the operation and performance of the business corporation and hence the institutions that...
Working Paper
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– Some Key Theoretical Issues
The paper tries to improve our understanding on the role of institutions in development by critically examining the current orthodox discourse on institutions and highlighting some of its key problems. After discussing some definitional problems, the chapter examines a number of problems in the...
Working Paper
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In the last two decades, there has been a global sea change in the theory and practice of central banking. The currently dominant ‘best practice’ approach to central banking consists of the following: (1) central bank independence (2) a focus on inflation fighting (including adopting formal...
Working Paper
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This paper examines the literature on the rule of law and economic development, and in particular the influential argument by La Porta et al., on the superiority of the Anglo-American common law system in fostering financial development. In this paper I show that however compelling their argument...
Working Paper
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Max Weber believed that bureaucracy could be understood by analysing its ideal-typical characteristics, and that these characteristics would become more pervasive as the modern age advanced. Weber’s horizontal account of bureaucracy can be criticised on various grounds, including its unrealistic...
Journal Article
– Problemas teóricos claves
This paper discusses how the theory on the role of institutions in development can be improved, by critically examining the current orthodox discourse on institutions. To understand the relationship between institutions and economic development, it is necessary to have some balance between...
– Recent Innovative Developments
Conventional wisdom recommends the superiority of private ownership of enterprises. The reality confronts it with a rich diversity in ownership and governance structures. This volume examines five types of unorthodox ownership and governance form emerging in the industrial sector across major...
WIDER Symposium on Adaptive Efficiency and Evolving Diversity of Enterprise Ownership and Governance
A property rights regime covers rights to use, lease, donate, bequest, and sell assets or collect the incomes generated by assets. A clear and transparent property rights regime facilitates investment and economic growth. While private property is considered by many to be the most superior type of...
Working Paper
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– The Economics of La Lega and Mondragón
This paper develops a theory of endogenous league formation and considers its implications for policy in developing countries. We generalize from features of the two most prominent European co-op leagues, Mondragón and La Lega, to develop the first formal model of the endogenous formation of co...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from East Asia
This paper investigates the benefits and associated agency costs of using internal capital markets through affiliating with groups using data of two thousand firms from nine East Asian economies between 1994-6. We find that mature and slow-growing firms with ownership structures more likely to...
Working Paper
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– Evidence for Italian Public Enterprises' Investment
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 European Union economic policies on the Italian...
Working Paper
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– The Case of Italian State-Owned Firms and the European Union
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 devolution of domestic economic policies to a...
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– A Rent Seeking Model of China’s Township-Village Enterprises
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 hold-up problem. Government ownership is shown to...
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This paper analyzes the ‘Silicon Valley model’ as a novel economic institution in the domain of technological product system innovation such as computers. We focus on the information structural relationship as well as governance relationships between venture capitalists and a cluster of...
Working Paper
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– Global Perspectives
We examine the role of institutional investors in financial markets and in corporate governance. In many countries, institutional investors have become the predominant players in financial markets and their influence worldwide is growing, chiefly due to the privatization and development of pension...
Working Paper
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– A Comparison of the United States, Japan, and Other East Asian Economies
We document that firms in eight East Asian countries and Japan diversify into more segments and engage into more related businesses―as measured by the degree of vertical relatedness and complementarity―than firms in the USA. Using data for the 1990-6 period, we observe a trend towards complementary...
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– Network Externalities and Mondragón and La Lega Co-Operative Networks
This paper examines strategies developed by Mondragón Co-operative Corporation in the Basque Region of Spain, and La Lega co-operative network in Italy, to mitigate disadvantages of the typical co-operative organizational structure and market position but without losing its critical advantages and...
Working Paper
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Increased equity participation by employees has attracted substantial interest for its potential to affect both economic outcomes (e.g., worker and firm performance) and social outcomes (e.g., wealth and income inequality). This paper summarizes the findings from over 50 large-sample empirical...
Working Paper
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In the 1990s, a new ownership form called ‘joint-stock co-operative’ (gufen hezuozhi) became widely adopted in China’s township and village enterprise sector. The promising dynamics and high adaptive ability of the new ownership form is in contradiction with the conclusions suggested by the existing...
Working Paper
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– A comparative Analysis across Development Stages and Institutional and Technological Contexts
This paper establishes a theoretical framework for the ongoing research project of UNU/WIDBR on Property Rights Regimes, Microeconomic Incentives and Development. It identifies the major research interests, questions, and focuses. The theoretical emphasis is on the very relevance of concrete...
Working Paper
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– An Extended Framework for Understanding Primitive Socialist Accumulation
This paper re-examines the current debate on price scissors based on an extended framework, in which the production and trade of industrial consumer goods within the rural sector is incorporated. It confirms that in the economy considered by Preobrazhensky, consumer rationing, especially of...
Displaying 32 of 35 results