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Publications (26)
Working Paper
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Alternative approaches to modelling distributional and welfare effects of changes in policy and the economic environment in developing and transition countries are surveyed. Microsimulations range from pure accounting approaches to models with behavioural equations based on econometric estimates and...
– 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...
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The interplay of a differentiated indirect tax structure and the variation in expenditure patterns across households, leads to a possibly unequal distribution of indirect tax liabilities across the population. This paper uses the ninth round of the RLMS survey to assess the distributional...
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...
– Is the Market Destroying Cooperation?
This text focuses on group behaviour in developing countries. It includes studies of producer and community organizations, NGOs and some public sector groups. Some groups function well, from the perspectives of equity, efficiency and well-being, while others do not. This book explores why, examining...
– Is the Market Destroying Cooperation?
This text focuses on group behaviour in developing countries. It includes studies of producer and community organizations, NGOs and some public sector groups. Some groups function well, from the perspectives of equity, efficiency and well-being, while others do not. This book explores why, examining...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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– Political Activism, Community Identity and Group Behaviour
This paper explores the nature of collective action and group behaviour through a case study of a highly successful political organization of poorer sex workers in Calcutta. The paper asks: What stimulated the participation of sex workers in their organization, promoted individual commitment to the...
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The paper deals with evaluating the adequacy of the assumption that in economic transactions people are self-interested insofar as they are motivated solely by the concern of maximizing their own utility, and in particular with assessing how this assumption affects within-group behaviour. Policy and...
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– Collective Action and the Market in Colombian Development
This paper considers the role and modus operandi of the National Coffee Federation of Colombia. Much respected and much criticized over time, today its role is being challenged as inappropriate to the new commitment to a free market economy. The paper evaluates the historical role of the federation...
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This paper focuses on the networks of business-related contacts that are built and maintained by manufacturing entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa. It describes the various functions that such networks perform, explaining why each function is important that given the environment in which the...
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– A Gender Analysis and Conceptual Framework
This paper examines group functioning in the management of common pool resources, such as forests. In recent years community forestry groups have mushroomed in South Asia. But how participative, equitable and efficient are they? Many have done well in the short run in terms of regenerating...
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– Leaders and Intermediaries in Producers’ Associations
The development literature considers associations an important economic development tool that allows producers to pursue their economic welfare collectively and through participatory means. This paper comparatively analyses the experience of three associations of agricultural producers in the...
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A very large amount of activity occurs within groups (that is within families, firms, co-operatives, conununities or governments). Yet most economic analysis focuses on market transactions between these agents. The purpose of the study is to analyse within group behaviour. Evidence suggests some...
Displaying 26 of 26 results