Klaus Armingeon criticizes our paper "Distribution Effects of Opening up an Economy and Voting Behaviour: An Analysis Based on the Example of the Swiss Vote on the EEA" published in this journal in 1998. In this reply we argue that his critique is mainly due to a misinterpretation of the goal of...

This note focuses on one of the factors common to Singapore's and Hong Kong's successful development: They both have an exceptionally good institutional framework for doing business. Data from a world-wide private enterprise survey are presented showing that local businessmen almost uniformly...

This paper argues that an unpredictable regulatory environment can be a major obstacle to the success of policy reforms. The case of Nicaragua is emblematic of the failure of reform events in LDCs because the economy was successfully stabilized but investment is insufficient to achieve...

While the mainstream of economic development theory focuses on the efficiency of policy measures, the role of the credibility of these measures is rarely analyzed. In this paper we argue that in less developed countries the problem of establishing the credibility of policy measures is at least...

The recent boom in cross-country growth analysis has renewed the empirical interest in political sources of economic growth. A large number of studies have tested political variables in growth regressions and a very heterogeneous set of variables has been proposed to measure economically...

This note critically reviews the research on the link between political systems and economic growth. Empirical attempts to capture this patent relationship have been met with mixed success. The authors conclude that the political variables used in these studies, i.e., democracy and political...

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Case studies and anecdotal evidence have suggested that uncertainty about policies, laws, and regulations has hampered development of the private sector in many developing countries. The authors present results from a new cross-country survey that provides comparable data on local...