Innovation wird weithin als eine treibende Kraft von nachhaltiger wirtschaftlicher Entwicklung angesehen. Regierungen, internationale Organisationen, Geber von Entwicklungshilfe und Investoren haben ein zunehmendes Interesse daran, die technologischen Fertigkeiten und die innovative...

This paper examines the efficiency effects of foreign bank entry on domestic banks in sub-Saharan Africa during the period 1999-2006. Using a recently compiled dataset on foreign bank presence, the competition and spillover effects of North-South, regional and nonregional South-South banks are...

Als Newcomer im Mikrofinanzmarkt werden Mikroversicherungen derzeit als vielversprechende Möglichkeit der sozialen Sicherung und Armutsreduzierung in Entwicklungsländern gehandelt. Es besteht die Hoffnung, weite Teile der Bevölkerung, denen ein Zugang zu staatlichem Sozialversicherungsschutz...

The institutionalization of political parties is said to be important for democratic development, but its measurement has remained a neglected area of research. We understand the institutionalization of political organizations as progress in four dimensions: roots in society, level of...

Although primary industries are important to developing countries, they have been largely unable to contribute to rapid growth. Systematically strengthening the development of local technology-intensive suppliers (t-suppliers), however, may contribute to both reinforcing the industrial base and...

Despite a growing interest in African political parties, no comparative analyses of political ideology in Africa have been undertaken to date. This study addresses this shortcoming by applying the Manifesto Research Group's (MRG) coding scheme to a complete set of African party manifestos in...

This paper reviews the effectiveness and efficiency of key policy instruments for MDG (Millennium Development Goals) achievement. We first demonstrate that average MDG progress is likely to be too slow to meet the education and health sector targets in a number of developing countries. We also...

The productivity and competitiveness of local firms in non-OECD countries depends as much on technological capacities and successful upgrading as in industrialized countries. However, developing countries undertake very little to no original R&D and primarily depend on foreign technology....

This article aims to evaluate to what extent the Argentine Senate was able to fulfil its constitutional function of controlling the Executive's prerogative to nominate judges between 1983 and 2006, as well as to examine the factors that influenced the exercise of this role. To do so, the paper...

This paper builds on institutional analysis to generate new conclusions about the economic viability of federalism. It does so by suggesting that Weingast´s seminal model of marketpreserving federalism falls short of accounting for the poor fiscal performance of multitiered systems in the...