Foreign direct investment (FDI) has become a much desired commodity by nations, regions and cities throughout the world. Indeed, governments bid for FDI because it is commonly thought to be an important engine of economic growth, job creation, and technological upgrading. The People’s Republic...

This article recounts the intellectual history of the UNDP’s Human Development Index. It begins with the early history of welfare economics and follows this field through three successive revolutions in thought, culminating in the theory of human development. The first section traces this...

There is growing consensus that corruption hurts economic performance by reducing private investment, adversely affecting the quantity and quality of public infrastructure, reducing tax revenue, and reducing human capital accumulation. In addition to inefficiency effects—lower growth for a...

We analyze the effects of EU adoption of a Sky Trust (Barnes and Breslow 2003) on the income distribution of Hungary, a lower-middle income EU member.  We use plausible parameters for an EU carbon charge and revenue recycling system, input-output data to track the effect of a carbon charge on...

The paper deals with the problems of coordination between monetary and fiscal policies in the Euro area. It examines how the existing institutions handle these problems and presents a proposal to reorganize them. The paper points out that, contrary to what is often stated by the literature,...

This paper examines the causes of conflict in Burundi and discusses strategies for building peace. The analysis of the complex relationships between distribution and group dynamics reveals that these relationships are reciprocal, implying that distribution and group dynamics are endogenous. The...

The paper examines grounds on which a `second opinion’ to the Washington Consensus may be constructed using data for a sample of 123 rich and poor nations for the period from 1960 to 1995. The historical record makes abundantly clear that international inequality has increased not only over...