This paper examines the importance of agglomeration economies and institutions vis-à-vis initial conditions and factor endowments in explaining the locational choice of foreign investors. Using a unique panel data set for 25 transition economies between 1990 and 1998, we find that the main...

What are the determinants of economic reform efforts? This paper tries to throw light on this question by examining recent reforms in Brazil, a country which followed a gradualist approach and was a late-starter among Latin American economies. We argue that these first generation reforms (trade...

Business groups are an important aspect of the industrial organization of many developing countries. This paper develops a theory suggesting that they may be organizations that facilitate modernization in the presence of financial market constraints. An important function of the stock market is...

The heightened interest of African countries to access international capital markets has put public debt sustainability once again high on the continent’s policy agenda. Applying the ‘stabilizing primary balance approach’ to sustainability shows that the primary balances exceeded those...

We use a spatial competition based model in a two-stage game setup to assess whether equilibrium in exchange rates among the leading currencies is attainable. We show that a stable equilibrium can be reached in the case of two leading currencies, but not in the case of three. In our model,...

This paper reports the first empirical evidence that fiscal reform efforts in transition countries have positive effects. Using the EBRD BEEPS I and II data, reported in 1999 and 2002, rigorous econometric models are estimated showing that the share of bribes paid to tax collectors is reduced in...

Research in development economics reveals that the bulk of cross-country differences in economic growth is attributable to differences in productivity. By some accounts, productivity contributes to more than 60 percent of countries’ growth in per capita GDP. I examine a particular channel...

Malaysia’s admirable economic growth is often attributed to liberal, open economic policies. Aggregate measures of openness, however, often veil the way coalitional politics drove illiberal government intervention in the economy to correct ethnically based economic inequality, create national...

The paper investigates whether the decline in environmental quality in BRIC economies is due to high energy consumption level which is a resultant of rapid economic growth. We answer this using environmental, macroeconomic and financial variables along with Kyoto Protocol indicators based on...

Productivity growth has long been associated with, among others, contestability of markets which, in turn, is dependent on the ease with which potential competitors to the incumbent firms can enter the product market. There is a growing consensus that in emerging markets regulatory and...