The main challenge of the transition has been to redefine how the state interacts with firms, but little attention has been paid to the flip side of the relationship : how firms influence the state - especially how they exert influence on, and collude with public officials to extract advantages....

The remarkable performance of the Irish economy in recent years has attracted much attention. Within a 10-year period the economy went from an 18 percent unemployment rate to nearly full employment, while the ratio of debt to GDP fell from 120 percent to less than 50 percent. Inevitably, this...

The author offers a possibly new interpretation of the connection between openness and good governance, with a conceptual model and some empirical evidence. Assuming that corruption and bad governance reduce international trade and investment more than domestic trade and investment, a"naturally...

This paper examines the conceptual and empirical basis of corruption and governance and concludes that decentralized local governance is conducive to reduced corruption in the long run. This is because localization helps to break the monopoly of power at the national level by bringing...

This paper reviews the experience with public finance issues under adjustment programs. This experience shows that fiscal changes are often triggered by budget and balance of payment crises. As a result, short-term considerations have dominated the policy measures introduced. Traditional...

The authors examine the decisions policy-makers in transitional socialist economies must make: how to define the asset liability structure of state owned enterprises and banks as they are privatized. They conclude that the many loans issued by state-owned enterprises under socialism are impeding...

World Bank lending and advice to support institutional and policy reform of public expenditure management is of recent and limited, but rapidly expanding scope. The paper begins with a brief overview of the Bank's recent work on public expenditures. The analysis indicates the lack of a...

Roughly 100 public enterprises in developing countries are using contract plans - negotiated performance agreements between the government/owner and the enterprises'managers or directors. Contract plans have not improved the financial performance of public enterprises dramatically. The process...

The authors contribute to the field of urban governance and globalization through an empirically-based exploration of determinants of the performance of cities. They construct a preliminary worldwide database for cities, containing variables and indicators of globalization (at the country and...

In 1990, Argentina privatized its state-owned telephone company, ENTel. Shifting telecommunications to the private sector was one of the first actions taken under the reform program of the new president, Carlos Saul Menem. In privatizing ENTel, the government focused on privatization as a way of...