The task of urban managers is to ensure the provision of basic urban services, such as water, waste removal, security, transport, and an environment conducive to economic activity, while maintaining fiscal sustainability of city operations. City managers in developing countries face increasing...

In a globalizing world, cities at or near the apex of the international urban hierarchy are among the favored few--New York, London, and Tokyo--that have acquired large economic, cultural, and symbolic roles. Among a handful of regions that aspire to such a role--such as Hong Kong, Miami, and...

The authors analyze the determinants of firm productivity in a group of Mexican firms. In particular, they test the contribution of external factors such as trade and knowledge diffusion, the availability of infrastructure, informal knowledge exchange, competitive environment, and business...

The author aims to empirically determine the significant factors that affect the levels of budget deficits of central governments across time and across countries. He empirically tests two prominent theories of budget deficits-the Barro (1979) tax-smoothing approach, and the still-untested...

The authors analyze the links between Russia's disappointing growth performance in the second half of the 1990s, its costly and unsuccessful stabilization, the macroeconomic meltdown of 1998, and the spectacular rise of non-payments. Non-payments flourished in an environment of fundamental...

Subsidies funded by Russia's regional governments represented about 5.2 percent of GDP in 1995, almost triple the 2 percent of GDP in subsidies funded by the federal government. Regional policies vary greatly, influenced more by local factors than by the federal government. To find out what...

After studying the problems of administering road user taxes in 19 developing countries, the author reports the following, among other things. There is no single, correct structure for road user taxation since the various charges may play different roles in different national revenue systems....

The author analyzes the causes of the collapse of profitability in 1991 of the Polish enterprise sector. He explores how it affected the government budget and assesses the forecasts of enterprise sector performance used to prepare the government's 1990 and 1991 budgets. About half of the drop in...

The authors compare the performance of public and private sector manufacturing firms in Indonesia for 1981-95. They analyze whether public sector inefficiency is due primarily to agency-type problems ("ownership") or to the business environment in which public enterprises operate, as measured by...

That free trade allows economies in an ideal world to achieve the greatest possible welfare is one of the few undisputed propositions in economics. In reality, however, free trade is rare. The author argues that many developing countries intervene in trade at least partly to raise revenues, and...