The desirability of WTO membership for China depends on whether its economic successes have been the result of its discovery of new institutional forms (e.g. dual track pricing, SOE contracts, and fiscal contracts) that are optimal for China's particular economic circumstances, or have been the...

Many fear China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) will impoverish its rural people by way of greater import competition in its agricultural markets. Anderson, Huang, and Ianchovichina explore that possibility bearing in mind that, even if producer prices of some (land-intensive)...

Conventional wisdom holds that international trade agreements can be used as external pressures and credible commitments to overcome opposition and lock in domestic economic reforms. This belief, however, underestimates the ability of politicians to use international trade agreements to leverage...

What do state-owned enterprises (SOEs) do? How do they respond to market incentives? Can we expect substantial efficiency gains from trade liberalization in economies with a strong presence of SOEs? Using a new dataset of Vietnamese firms we document a set of empirical regularities...

What do state-owned enterprises (SOEs) do? How do they respond to market incentives? Can we expect substantial efficiency gains from trade liberalization in economies with a strong presence of SOEs? Using a new dataset of Vietnamese firms we document a set of empirical regularities...

This chapter sets the scene for the analysis contained in the author's book: Law and Development: An Institutional Critique, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018.. It discusses the reasons for the interest in the relationship between the law and economic development beginning with a review of different...

Unlike the popular belief, digital transformation mainly gets stymied by legal and regulatory issues related with legacy institutions in Asia rather than technical difficulties. The real challenges triggered by the PSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2) are how the region would overcome the overly...

This paper presents lessons from environmental management in Bulgarian agriculture for Central Asian countries. Comparative institutional analysis is employed to evaluate potential of diverse governing modes to deal with environmental problems and risks, protect absolute and contracted...

This working paper shows China's technological advance, its basis in using foreign technology combined with its own manpower resources, and its clever integration of regional ambitions with national policies and programs. It also indicates an emerging global rivalry as China moves towards a...

Corruption (the abuse of entrusted authority for illicit gain) is pervasive, hard to measure, and damaging both to economic growth and human rights. Corruption is also intimately associated with trade. However, the international organization governing trade, the WTO, says nothing about...