It is useful from time to time to revisit the pioneers in a field. The richness of their original thought is often diminished as new specialists in a field are educated or, rather, trained. Stylized caricatures and toy models out-compete nuanced multidisciplinary narratives in the competition...

If development is seen basically as autonomous self-development, then there is a subtle paradox in the whole notion of development assistance: How can an outside party ("helper") assist those undertaking autonomous activities (the"doers") without overriding, or undercutting their autonomy? This...

The market system consists of a price mechanism, built on the foundation of a system of property, and contract. In many developing, and transition economies, the market system functions poorly. In many cases, if not most, the malfunctioning is not simply in the price system (for example,...

Common wisdom among post-socialist reformers has beento use voucher investment funds to provide the corporate governance needed to restructure newly privatized enterprises after mass privatization efforts. The idea has been that mass privatization would spread the ownership too wide and make...

Jane Jacobs is best known as a writer about cities and as a vigorous critic of urban planning. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that she should be read as a writer on economic development who focuses on cities as the principal sites of development. The recent upsurge of interest in...

Several years have passed since the failure of shock therapy to create a vibrant market economy in Russia. Some of the architects of the original plans have admitted that their strategies were naive, incomplete, or excessively ambitious. Others still insist there were no viable alternatives. In...

It is probably the most important issue in economics. How do economies grow? And for a few centuries, one traditional model has prevailed. Economies grow through specializing in industries, through division of labor, and through standardization. But one of the leading thinkers of our time, the...

This paper deals with Russia’s transition from communism to market economy which has been harder than anticipated just a decade ago. The rise in prosperity that the market economy had promised had not been materialised. But, in other transition countries from successes and failures, lessons...

This article outlines the “fundamental myth†about the structure of property rights in a capitalist economy, namely the idea that being the residual claimant in a productive opportunity is part of a bundle of property rights known as the “ownership of the firm.†Residual...