Although it is true that a liberal trade and investment policy is essential for attracting higher level of private investment, it is not a sufficient factor. Many developing countries (DCs) and least developed countries (LDCs) which have opened up their economies to a large extent and have in...

Lucas (1976) argued that interventionist policies in macroeconomics may fail because the policies themselves affect the optimal behavior of private agents and hence the associated response parameters. We extend Lucas's argument and propose that a highly controlled and regulated environment leads...

Social safety net is a measure taken by the government in order to prevent the vulnerable section of its population to fall beyond a certain level of poverty. Social safety net programmes (SSNPs) are designed to provide support for the vulnerable section of the society. With a vision to prevent...

In comparing fiscal indicators of Japan and Australia, it is generally perceived that Japans fiscal conditions are very serious and those of Australia are very sound. However, in Australia the rising ratio of foreign liabilities to GDP is the source of anxiety in the market, which in turn...

Over the last 20 years of Doimoi (renovation) reform policy in Vietnam, private sector has significantly contributed to the outstanding success of the economy. The rapid development of this sector has been resulted from the opening -up economic policy pursued by Vietnamese government and...

Looking back around half a century, Thailand has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world. lt also possesses an impressive record in term of poverfy reduction' Whether the two phenomena are related and, if so, how, are of great interest to academic and policymakers. This paper...

Recent years have seen increasing interest in economic analyses of religion. We carry out a critical review of Economics of Religion (EoR) in this review essay. We find that on the one hand EoR has made a significant contribution to enhance our understanding of secular trappings of religion and...

Chinas exports have become increasingly sophisticated. This has generated anxiety in developed countries as the competitive pressure may be increasingly felt outside labor-intensive industries. Using product-level data on exports from different cities within China, this paper investigates the...

We investigate how the link between individual schooling and political participation is affected by country characteristics. We introduce a focus on a set of variables - namely factor endowments - which inuence the relative productivity of human capital in political versus production activities....

In this paper we assess the record of different post reform governments in meeting their targets and improving both delivery and finances. A variety of indices are constructed, and consistency checks devised to measure relative performance. No government has achieved its targets, but the...