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 current economic crisis in Argentina is only partly the result of inappropriate domestic policies to cope with the recent external shocks. Years of inappropriate policies have damaged Argentina's economy. Even if no external shocks had occurred, the country would still have to change the...

Korea is an interesting case study in long-term and short-term adjustment. The country's rate of economic growth after 1965 was high at a time of rapid, fundamental economic restructuring. It's open, export-oriented economy was exposed to oil price shocks and interest rate hikes. To keep up the...

How does economic geography influence industrial production and thereby affect industrial location decisions and the spatial distribution of development? For manufacturing industry, what are the externalities that matter, and to what extent? Are these externalities spatially localized? The...

The link between economic growth, and better provision of infrastructure services may be unproven, but it is clear that reforms to make infrastructure services more competitive (where possible), and to provide strong, and independent economic regulation of natural monopolies, do create an...

For sustained growth, a developing economy must provide productive employment opportunities in nonagricultural sectors. As the economy grows, employment shifts from the agricultural sector to industrial and service sectors. The move away from agriculture happens because of the decline in the...

The author develops a theoretical framework to guide empirical analysis of how land registration affects financial development and economic growth. Most conceptual approaches investigate the effects of land registration on only one sector, nut land registration is commonly observed to affect not...

Significant changes in public investment patterns - in both the sectoral uses of funds, and their geographic distribution - emerged after Bolivia devolved substantial resources from central agencies, to municipalities in 1994. By far the most important determinant of these changes are objective...

The most striking fact about the economic geography of the world is the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity, including the coexistence of economic development and underdevelopment. High-income regions are almost entirely concentrated in a few temperate zones, half of the world's GDP...

The Russian Federation has one of the richest natural resource endowments in the world. Despite their importance in the Russian economy, natural resources do not contribute as much as they could to public revenues. Large resource rents (excess payments, or above-normal profits generated by...