In this paper I analyze the economic incentives that govern the strategic relationship between the government and the independent media using a consistent analytical framework. The analysis focuses on the extent to which the ‘free’ press can act as a deterrent to corruption in governance. I...

This paper reviews recent research dealing with the relationships between economic growth, income distribution, and poverty. This generally fails to find any systematic pattern of change in income distribution during recent decades. Neither does it find any systematic link from fast growth to...

Contemporary civil wars are rooted in a partial or complete breakdown of the social contract, often involving disputes over public spending, resource revenues, and taxation. A feasible social contract gives potential rebels something akin to a transfer. When this is improbable, and the potential...

This paper analyzes the ‘Silicon Valley model’ as a novel economic institution in the domain of technological product system innovation such as computers. We focus on the information structural relationship as well as governance relationships between venture capitalists and a cluster of...

The paper uses an aid disaggregation approach to examine the impact of different types of aid on the fiscal sector of the aid-recipient country. It uses time-series data on different types of aid (project aid, programme aid, technical assistance and food aid) for Uganda, an important aid...

This paper, using a cumulative growth model and a catch-up model, verifies the cumulative relationship between IT investment and economic growth, and then examines whether this relationship enlarges the differences in the economic growth among OECD countries. We observe the following results:...

Studies of the inter-recipient allocation of aid may be categorized threefold. First, there are those which attempt to explain the observed allocation of aid. Second, there are those which seek to describe or evaluate the allocation of aid against normative criteria. Third, there are those which...

Warlords compete for turf that provides them with rents and ‘taxable’ resources but they can also offer a semblance of security within their respective territories. This article first examines two economic models of warlord competition. Because such competition takes place through the use of...

I model life expectancy in terms of physical and human capital and technology, the fundamental economic variables described by economic growth theories. For concreteness, the Solow model and a convergence club growth model by Howitt and Mayer (2001) are used as examples. I discuss how a multiple...

Globalization has drastically improved access of technological latecomers to advanced technologies and provides a unique opportunity for low-income countries to raise per capita income. This paper shows that low-income countries as a group have in fact substantially increased the GDP-ratio of...