The paper addresses the question what effects the enlargement of a monetary union will have on necessary structural reforms in the (low distortion) member countries and the (high distortion) candidate countries. While monetary union lowers reforms in the candidate countries, members of the...

The paper addresses the question what effects the enlargement of a monetary union will have on necessary structural refoms in the (low distortion) member countries and the (high distortion) candidate country. While monetary union lowers reforms in the candidate country, members of the monetary...

This paper studies empirically the effects of and the interactions amongst economic and political liberalizations. Economic liberalizations are measured by a widely used indicator that captures the scope of the market in the economy, and in particular of policies towards freer international...

This paper develops a dynamic framework to analyze the political sustainability of economic reforms in developing countries. First, we demonstrate that economic reforms that are proceeding successfully may run into a political impasse, with the reform's initial success having a negative impact...

We develop a dynamic two-party political economy framework, in which parties seek to maximize vote share and face the trade-off between catering to their respective core constituencies on the one hand and "middle of the road" voters with no partisan affiliation on the other hand. In contrast to...

This paper examines the progress of state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform in the People's Republic of China. After defining SOEs and considering their scope of operation within the PRC economy, the focus of the paper is on the major reform waves that followed the deterioration of SOE profitability...

The on-going "Make in India" campaign aims at manufacturing revival. Its characteristics resemble East Asian industrial reform and growth policies based on the flying-geese model which highlights "step-by-step" changes in a country's specialisation pattern and global competitiveness accompanied...

This paper discusses several problems of direct popular decisions. In the first part, we consider problems related to the functioning of direct democracy. As a political system it only makes sense if there exists a continuous process and not if only occasional single questions are brought to a...