While the effects of corruption on bilateral trade have been relatively well explored, its effect on the composition of trading partners has not been studied. In this paper, we argue that corruption in a country is likely to impose asymmetric costs on its trading partners depending on their...

Twenty years after the fall of the iron curtain - which for decades had separated East from West - most countries of Central and Eastern Europe are now members of the European Union; some have even adopted the euro. Nonetheless, these countries have also remained exceptionally vulnerable to...

The paper discusses views on China and India as country role models. In so doing the article recounts the economic and political reforms pursued by the two countries. The paper also outlines the outstanding reforms and the bottlenecks that could jeopardize economic performance and development...

This paper considers the effect of corruption on the effciency of capital investment. Using firm-level level data from the World Bank enterprise surveys, covering 90 developing and transition economies, we consider whether the cost of informal bribe payments distorts the efficient allocation of...

This paper identifies eight political economy factors that influenced governments' policy choices during the most recent global food price crisis. To explain the variety of responses and the policy failures, a framework is proposed that locates policies along the twin dimensions of unitary vs....

This study aims to provide a neo-institutional explanation of why South Korea increasingly intends to share its developmental experience with the rest of the world. South Korea's knowledge sharing projects are the leading example of expansionary and self-defining efforts of its aid...

This paper suggests that an optimal local content policy in the context of flawed institutions is a more minimal one than those typically pursued by developing countries with recently discovered petroleum reserves. We argue that local content requirements need to be seen as a public expenditure...

This paper exploits five waves of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) to investigate issues of social and political capital in rural Viet Nam. I analyse membership of the Communist Party, 'mass organizations' (Farmers' Union, Women's Union, etc.) and other voluntary...

This paper evaluates Kenya's food price crisis over 2002 - 11 using a political economy approach. Kenya's food prices have been high and volatile relative to world food prices. Moreover, domestic food markets are highly integrated while about 30 per cent of the changes in world market prices are...

The coherence and effectiveness of engagement with the world's 'fragile and conflictaffected states' - beyond ethical imperatives and geo-strategic considerations - turns on answers to two vexing questions. First, on what defensible basis is any given country, at any given historical moment,...