There are three signature features of autocracies. First, there is a wide variety across autocracies in terms of economic performance: some do much better and some much worse than democracies. Second, economic performance of a given autocracy is more sensitive to leader quality, and exhibits...

The dual track approach to market liberalization has been widely recognized as the key to the success of the Chinese economic reform. In this paper we study the effectiveness of this strategy in economic environments where the status quo government control is incomplete. We show that in a...

This paper presents a dynamic model of privatization, driven by improved institutional protection of private property rights and constrained by the buyer's financial constraints. Government ownership is more efficient than private ownership when private property rights are insecure. Improved...

This paper models a multilateral agreement on investment (MAI) as a coordination device. Multinational enterprises can invest in any number of countries. Without a multilateral investment agreement, expropriation triggers an investment stop by the single MNE. Under a multilateral agreement,...

Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, April 1998. <p> We study China's township-village enterprises (TVEs) from an organizational perspective with a focus on governance. Unlike most previous studies, we interpret the firm boundaries of TVEs at the community level rather than the enterprise...</p>

This paper models a multilateral agreement on investment (MAI) as a coordination device. Multinational enterprises can invest in any number of countries. Without a multilateral investment agreement, expropriation triggers an investment stop by the single MNE. Under a multilateral agreement,...