What explains the varying responses by Thai governments to changes in the international economic environment over time. To answer this the paper emphasizes the link between the nature of the political structure/policymaking environment and the government’s reform capacity. Thailand’s...

The paper addresses the issue of rethinking the welfare state as a part of a broader national system of social protection (NSSP) and a mode of societal regulation. In order to overcome the theoretical limits of bottom-up comparative analysis of welfare states, one builds a structural model of...

Corruption has fierce impacts on economic and societal development and is subject to a vast range of institutional, jurisdictional, societal and economic conditions. Research indicates that corruption's predominantly negative effects have arisen to a massive trans-border threat while creating...

This paper surveys alternative approaches to the emergence and evolution of institutions. The challenge is to develop frameworks capable of capturing both stability and change. We follow a “descaling” approach to show how founding assumptions about economics—namely, alternative assumptions...

Germany’s system of economic and political governance strongly relies on group decision-making and consensus to solve economic issues. This approach relates to a wide spectrum of decisions, including the social partners with the trade unions and the employers’ associations in wage formation,...

Using cross–country and Peruvian data, I show that victims of misfortune, particularly crime victims, are much more likely than non–victims to bribe public officials. Misfortune increases victims’ demand for public services, raising bribery indirectly, and also increases victims’...

This paper investigates the relationship between the size of government and economic growth in OECD countries in 1960–2000. The underlying idea is that government expenditures on public goods basically have a positive effect on growth, but this growth effect tends to decline or even reverse...

This paper deals with alternative policy options for tackling congestion and environmental problems in the German airport sector. The starting point of the discussion is the planned privatisation of several airports in Germany, which is normally justified on productive efficiency grounds....