One explanation for Africa's failure to develop is the weakness of its public institutions. The authors consider one aspect of that weakness: rent-seeking and corruption at the top of government. Under the conditions of their model, and autocrat who seeks to maximize personal financial return...

The debate on fiscal policy in Europe centers on how to let automatic stabilizers work while achieving fiscal consolidation. There is significant agreement on the importance of using fiscal policy as a counter-cyclical instrument, as monetary policy can no longer play this role. In contrast,...

Most analyses of property rights and economic development point to the negative influence of insecure property rights on private investment. The authors focus instead on the largely unexamined effects of insecure property rights on government policy choices. They identify one significant...

Social security systems in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union devote most of their resources to earnings-related pensions and neglect"targeted"interventions to aid losers from the transition to a market economy. As social insurance systems, they have the characteristic weaknesses of the...

Foreign direct investment brings host countries capital, productive facilities, and technology transfers as well as employment, new job skills, and management expertise. It is important to the Russian Federation, where incentives for competition are limited and incentives to becoming efficient...

It is naive to believe that a market economy can be introduced by"shock therapy,"the author argues. In the several cases when it has been attempted, it has brought problems. A market economy requires adequate institutions and appropriate behavior, both of which can be introduced only gradually...

One of the apparent inconsistencies in the breakup of multinational states is that, while the republics justified their decision by claiming they wanted increased sovereignty, the new states'strong desire to join the European Union shows their intention to dissipate this sovereignty. How can the...

Latvia's experience over the past decade shows that economic growth and real convergence can no longer be assumedto be exogenously driven processes determined by given technological improvements and relatively higher factor returns. Instead, it is an endogenously driven process led by many...

Despite massive oil rent incomes since the early 1970s, the economic performance of oil-exporting countries-with notable exceptions-is poor. While there is extensive literature on the management of oil resources, analysis of the underlying political determinants of this poor performance is more...

An understanding of corporate governance theory can promote the adoption of appropriate governance tools to limit agency problems in public pension fund management. The absence of a market for corporate control hinders the translation of lessons from the private sector corporate world to public...