Studies of successful and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and their marketing and technical support systems were undertaken for Colombia, Indonesia, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. Three to four subsectors were examined in each country. The sample worldwide amounted to 445 firms. Mechanisms to...

This paper lays out a comparative framework for assessing the potential, limitations and challenges of a variety of emerging institutional innovations in globalized regulation. The framework highlights two dimensions of effectiveness -- the comprehensiveness of coverage, and the credibility of...

Many low-income countries contend with a governance syndrome characterized by a difficult combination of seeming openness, weak institutions, and strong inter-elite contestation for power and resources. In such countries, neither broad-based policy nor public management reforms are likely to be...

A frontier challenge for development strategy is to move beyond prescribing optimal economic policies, and instead – taking a broad view of the interactions between economic, political and social constraints and dynamics -- to identify entry points capable of breaking a low-growth logjam, and...

This paper analyzes from an institutional perspective the experiences of twelve countries with selected aspects of trade and investment policy reform. The analysis highlights two distinct but related determinants of the appropriate design of policy reform - the organizational capabilities of...

Drawing on the new institutional economics, the authors examine the impact on businesses of Brazil's relatively complex, nontransparent legal and regulatory institutions and compare their costs with those of Chile's institutions, which are relatively simple. They examine four basic areas where...

The authors survey a sample of 91 small or medium-size exporters of garments, rattan furniture, the two are reasonably equally mixed. About 75 percent of the entrepreneures in garments and rattan furniture, and carved wooden furniture (Jepara), and interview people in public and nonprofit...