Filter by...
Reset all
Publications (37)
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence from Tunisia
This paper studies the determinants of the inefficient functioning of the Tunisian labour market. The study takes advantage of recent developments in the stochastic frontier techniques and estimates the matching function for Tunisia using disaggregated data. We include control variables as...
Working Paper
pdf
– Country Role Models of Development Success?
The paper discusses views on China and India as country role models. In so doing the article recounts the economic and political reforms pursued by the two countries. The paper also outlines the outstanding reforms and the bottlenecks that could jeopardize economic performance and development going...
Working Paper
pdf
– Getting Public Sector Elite Officials to Support Government Reform in Brazil
This paper shows how an elite cadre of public sector officials played a key role in the success of administrative reforms in Brazil’s state tax administration bureaus in the 1990s. The success of the reforms strengthened public sector bureaucracies and institutions at all government levels...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Role of the Customs Elite on the Reform Process in Cameroon
An ethnographic approach is applied to Cameroon customs in order to explore the role and the capacity of the bureaucratic elites to reform their institution. Fighting against corruption has led to the extraction and circulation of legal ‘collective money’ that fuels internal funds. This collective...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper discusses the issue of taxation and redistribution in economies dominated by Elites with limited state capacity. Within a simple aggregate framework, we discuss the political economy incentives of Elites to tax, redistribute and increase state capacity. In particular, the analysis...
Working Paper
pdf
Land efficiency in urban China is examined, using Tianjin as a case study, from the perspective of agricultural land conservation; reduction in energy use, conventional pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions; and human time savings. Issues addressed include increased scatter on the periphery, over...
Working Paper
pdf
– Lessons from Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic
This paper provides a synthesis of the four papers on the Latin American and Caribbean economies: Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. It focuses on the following themes: macroeconomic stabilization and fiscal challenges, poverty and inequality, and the use of natural resources to...
Working Paper
pdf
– Resident Koreans in Japan
This paper discusses the development of Korean communities in Japan from their origins in the late nineteenth century through their stabilization following the Second World War. Approaching the developing communities from a spatial perspective, the chapter compares Tokyo and Osaka and shows the...
Working Paper
pdf
Particular sets of institutions, once they become established in a society, have a strong tendency to persist. In this paper I argue that understanding how elites form and reproduce is key to understanding the persistence of institutions over time. I illustrate this idea with a simple political...
Working Paper
pdf
Rapid economic development in China in the post-1978 era has been considered 'intriguing' and 'puzzling' since it occurred under the dominance of the Chinese Communist Party – the fusion of politics and economics is supposed to be a powerful impediment to market growth. Scholars have proposed...
Working Paper
pdf
This study provides evidence that culture understood as values and beliefs moves very slowly. Despite massive institutional change, values and beliefs in transition countries have not changed much over the last 20 years. Evidence suggests that culture is affected by the long run historical past, in...
Working Paper
pdf
– Lessons from Transition
The paper explores a phenomenon often observed in transition economies, when newly established institutions are misused, i.e., applied or resorted to for reasons which have little in common with their intended or anticipated purpose. In such incidences institutions become sources of private gains...
Working Paper
pdf
– Governing Finance in Central and Eastern Europe
Twenty years after the fall of the iron curtain—which for decades had separated East from West—most countries of Central and Eastern Europe are now members of the European Union; some have even adopted the euro. Nonetheless, these countries have also remained exceptionally vulnerable to upset...
Working Paper
pdf
– How Can Colombo Prevent the Emerging Chaos?
This paper examines urbanization trends, the growth of Colombo and its present state of development. It looks at the approaches to the planned interventions in the city and demonstrates how a uni-directional urban development has had a detrimental impact upon healthy growth and quality of life in a...
Working Paper
pdf
– Central Europe, Russia and China Compared
In the former socialist redistributive economies, the transition to market economy and the conversion to private ownership followed different trajectories. The paper offers an overview on how a new class of grand bourgeoisie was formed in three different regions of the transition: Central Europe...
Working Paper
pdf
– An Analysis Using Panel Household Survey Data, 1990-2005
This paper, using for the first time household survey data from 26 post-communist countries, covering the period 1990-2005, examines correlates of unprecedented increases in inequality registered by most of these economies. We find that, after controlling for country-fixed effects and type of survey...
Displaying 16 of 37 results