Despite the fact that China and Vietnam have been the world’s two fastest growing economies over the past two decades, their income inequality patterns are very different. In this paper, we take a deep look at political institutions in the two countries, demonstrating that profound differences...

The literature on authoritarian institutions points to nationwide elections as a mechanism for learning about the preferences of citizens. In using elections in this way, however, authoritarians face a tradeoff between gathering reliable information and guaranteeing electoral victory. In this...

The article seeks to measure and explain provincial autonomy in Vietnam during the reform era, arguing that the absence of an effective measure of autonomy to date has limited the scope for developing an overarching theory capable of explaining autonomy across a range of settings. The article...

The 2007 National Assembly (NA) election in Vietnam inspired the imagination of observers. New electoral procedures boded well for increased competition and representation. This article probes this outcome, providing a detailed account of how the Vietnamese electoral process works in practice....

This paper utilizes a unique dataset of 500 firms in ten Cambodian provinces and a natural experiment to test a long-held convention in political economy that the predictability of a corruption is at least as important for firm investment decisions as the amount of bribes a firm must pay,...

This paper tests the hypothesis that increasing stocks of foreign direct investment (FDI) can lead to de facto decentralization in the form of autonomous reform experiments by subnational leaders. Because these reform experiments may attract FDI in subsequent years, there is a possibility of...

A commonly proffered theory to explain the use of elections in authoritarian regimes is that they help identify talented young leaders who can be groomed for leadership positions. Unfortunately, due to the difficulties of obtaining data in authoritarian settings, this hypothesis has not been...

Scholars have long argued that institutional context significantly influences business strategy and economic performance. Research on the relationship between institutions and business strategy, however, has overwhelmingly focused on the decisions of larger, established corporations, mostly...

Theoretical and empirical research on causes and consequences of defense spending is plentiful. Most of this research uses “top line” defense spending data, either as a share of GDP or as a raw monetary figure. Empirical research has been limited, however, by the “blunt” nature of this...

An influential literature has demonstrated that legislative transparency can improve the performance of parliamentarians in democracies. In a democracy, the incentive for improved performance is created by voters' responses to newly available information. Building on this work, donor projects...