Public sector unions operate in politically challenging environments. Recent limitations on collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and attempts to curtail collective bargaining in Ohio are illustrative of union vulnerability to shifts in the political climate. In Wisconsin, only months after...

Do sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) contribute to Africa's development? This paper assesses the objectives of SWFs (fiscal stabilization, productive investment, intergenerational saving) and discusses alternatives. We argue that fiscal stabilization funds are often necessary, but entail...

The paper investigates effects of fiscal decentralization on non-oil sector development in case of Azerbaijan for the quarterly period of 2002 through 2013. Results obtained from Auto-regressive Distributed Lag Bounds Testing approach show that share of local expenditures and revenues in total,...

The purpose of the paper is to show that the nature of the relationship between governance and democracy varies depending on how the two terms (of a political discourse) are defined, that when the definition of one term encompasses distinctive features of the other we find that governance and...

What makes elites developmental instead of predatory? We argue that Mozambique's elite was developmental at independence 35 years ago. With pressure and encouragement from international forces, it became predatory. It has now partly returned to its developmental roots and is trying to use the...

Using publicly available databases and drawing on a wide range of indicators, this paper reviews the institutional performance of Mozambique across seven broad categories: rule of law and judicial independence; voice and freedom of expression/association; political participation; accountability...

This paper is about public sector pensions, an issue that has become increasingly contentious in a number of countries in recent years, including in the United Kingdom. In the UK the public debate has focussed on the perceived generosity of these pensions, which, it is often claimed, contrasts...

This paper analyses the current financial crisis from a Neo-Schumpeterian perspective. We postulate four linkages that led to the crisis, and that will help us find our way out of the crisis. Therefore, we show that the current evolution is very similar to the Japanese crisis in the beginning of...

The literature on socio economic implications of fiscal decentralization (FD) has recently been expanding, though only very few studies to day have looked at its macroeconomic effects. This paper investigates the relationship between FD and budget deficits. Using various measures of both...