This paper studies the causes and consequences of political centralization and fragmentation in China and Europe. We argue that the severe and unidirectional threat of external invasion fostered political centralization in China while Europe faced a wider variety of smaller external threats and...

The main contribution of this paper is the identification of obstacles at the different levels of coordination, and constructive recommendations for (a) improving the effectiveness of existing coordination and (b) forging linkages where necessary between the various stakeholders i.e., central...

This paper discusses the key hypotheses which Joseph Stiglitz proposed, in his wide-ranging critique of the ''Washington Consensus'', with regard to transition reforms and economic polices in China and Russia. The primary purpose is to evaluate the Stiglitz perspective in the light of empirical...

Imperial China used an empire-wide system of examinations to select civil servants. Using a semiparametric matching-based difference-in-differences estimator, we show that the persecution of scholar-officials led to a decline in the number of examinees at the provincial and prefectural level. To...

This paper discusses recent developments in the literature on local and regional innovative performance to show how an ‘integrated’ conceptual framework based on the cross-fertilization of different theories can serve as a foundation for the comparative analysis of territorial innovation...

Britain was first, though the classical (and many of the neoclassical) economists did not recognize that its course was beginning the factor of 16. The slow British growth in the 18th century proposed by Crafts and Harley is unbelievable, but however one assigns growth within the period...

Many are currently studying the origins of the financial crisis in an attempt to answer two seemingly simple questions: why did it happen, and can another crisis be prevented? Those two questions have proved incredibly divisive. The majority opinion of The United States Financial Crisis Inquiry...

The belief that elections reduce rent seeking by government officials is widely held, likewise the belief that rent seeking decreases as elections are less subject to corruption. In this paper we develop and test a model in which these beliefs are carefully examined. Our model indicates that,...

Using a sample of rural Chines villages which have recently been the subject of democratic reforms we look for the relationship between marginal changes in the democratic process and marginal changes in economic outcomes. We find that even very poorly conducted elections can have large incentive...