Download or read book Boondoggles and Expropriation written by Philip Keefer and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Democratization and Clientelism written by Philip Keefer and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper identifies systematic performance differences between younger and older democracies: younger democracies are more corrupt; exhibit less rule of law, lower levels of bureaucratic quality, and lower secondary school enrollments; and spend more on public investment and government workers. Only one theory explains the effects of democratic age on the wide range of policy outcomes examined here-the inability of political competitors in younger democracies to make credible promises to citizens. This explanation, first advanced in Keefer and Vlaicu (2004), offers a concrete interpretation of what political institutionalization might mean, and why it is that young democracies frequently fail to become older and well-performing democracies. A variety of tests support this explanation against alternatives. The effect of democratic age remains large even after controlling for the possibilities that voters are less well-informed in young democracies, that young democracies have systematically different political and electoral institutions, or that young democracies exhibit more polarized societies.

Download or read book The Impact of Property Rights on Households Investment Risk Coping and Policy Preferences written by Klaus W. Deininger and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even though it is widely recognized that giving farmers more secure land rights may increase agricultural investment, scholars contend that, in the case of China, such a policy might undermine the function of land as a social safety net and, as a consequence, not be sustainable or command broad support. Data from three provinces, one of which had adopted a policy to increase security of tenure in advance of the others, suggest that greater tenure security, especially if combined with transferability of land, had a positive impact on agricultural investment and, within the time frame considered, led neither to an increase in inequality of land distribution nor a reduction in households' ability to cope with exogenous shocks. Household support for more secure property rights is increased by their access to other insurance mechanisms, suggesting some role of land as a safety net. At the same time, past exposure to this type of land right has a much larger impact quantitatively, suggesting that a large part of the resistance to changed property rights arrangements disappears as household familiarity with such rights increases.

Download or read book Land Rental Markets as an Alternative to Government Reallocation written by Klaus W. Deininger and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors develop a model of land leasing with agents characterized by unobserved heterogeneity in ability and presence of an off-farm labor market. In this case, decentralized land rental may contribute to equity and efficiency goals and may have several advantages over administrative reallocation. The extent to which this is true empirically is explored using data from three of China's poorest provinces. The authors find that both processes redistribute land to those with lower endowments but that land rental markets are more effective in doing so and also have a larger productivity-enhancing effect than administrative reallocation, implying that more active land rental markets would allow producers to realize significant productivity gains. At the same time, the presence of a large number of producers whose participation in rental markets remains constrained suggests that efforts to reduce transaction costs in land rental markets would be warranted.

Download or read book Assessing the Impact of Communication Costs on International Trade written by Carsten Fink and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent research suggests that trade costs influence the pattern of specialization and trade, but there is limited empirical research on the determinants of trade costs. The existing literature identifies a range of barriers that separate nations, but then typically focuses only on transport costs. Although communication costs figure prominently in intuitive explanations and casual observations, they have played little role in the formal analysis of trade costs. The authors seek to examine whether this neglect matters, and whether the inclusion of the magnitude and variation of communication costs across partner countries can add value to existing explanations of the pattern of trade. The authors develop a simple multi-sector model of "impeded" trade that generates hypotheses in a gravity-type estimation framework. The main proxies for bilateral communication costs are the per-minute country-to-country calling prices charged in the importing and exporting countries. The use of bilateral variations in prices yields estimates that are superior to the ones obtained from country-specific measures of communication infrastructure used in previous studies. The authors find that international variations in communication costs have a significant influence on bilateral trade flows, at the aggregate level and for most individual sectors disaggregated according to the 2-digit SITC classification. Since information and communication needs are likely to be much greater for differentiated goods, the authors test whether trade in these products is more sensitive to variations in the costs of communication. Using the Rauch classification of product heterogeneity, the estimates suggest that the impact of communication costs on trade in differentiated products is as much as one-third larger than on trade in homogenous products. Finally, the authors verify, to the extent possible, that the significance of communication costs is not driven by their endogeneity or by omitted variables.

Download or read book Micro level Estimation of Welfare written by Chris Elbers and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors construct and derive the properties of estimators of welfare that take advantage of the detailed information about living standards available in small household surveys and the comprehensive coverage of a census or large sample. By combining the strengths of each, the estimators can be used at a remarkably disaggregated level. They have a clear interpretation, are mutually comparable, and can be assessed for reliability using standard statistical theory. Using data from Ecuador, the authors obtain estimates of welfare measures, some of which are quite reliable for populations as small as 15,000 households--a "town." They provide simple illustrations of their use. Such estimates open up the possibility of testing, at a more convincing intra-country level, the many recent models relating welfare distributions to growth and a variety of socioeconomic and political outcomes. This paper--a product of the Poverty Team, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to develop tools for the analysis of poverty and income distribution.

Download or read book Missed OPportunities written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines NACA's organization in the light of Alfred D. Chandler's Strategy and Structure. It analyzes the agency's administration. NACA's strategy of maximizing existing technology and its committee's structure were the key elements in its failure to develop jet propulsion in the early 1940s. We will focus first on NACA and its organization. The second chapter will describe jet propulsion, particularly the acquisition of a Whittle engine from England and General Arnold 's role in keeping NACA out of the development of the Whittle engine in the United States. The third chapter will concentrate on the reasons that combined and led to the difficulties of NACA in the mid-forties and the 1950s. That chapter will look at the rise of the aviation industry, the criticism it expressed against NACA, and finally NACA's strategy as one of the causes of failure.

Download or read book Lectures on Syphilis and on Some Forms of Local Disease Affecting Principally the Organs of Generati written by Henry Lee and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Download or read book Financial Development Property Rights and Growth written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Recurrent expenditure requirements of capital projects estimation for budget purposes written by Ronald Hood and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the issue of estimating recurrent costs associated with capital projects in the investment budget. It is intended to help overcome budget planning problems which give rise to the chronic under-funding of maintenance and operating costs typical in some developing economies. The objective is to provide guidance in the preparation of budget submissions so that information on the future recurrent cost implications of today's capital spending is quantified in a way that supports the authorities in making project selection and budget decisions. The paper is in three parts. The first part outlines some concepts and definitions involved in measuring recurrent costs. The second part provides stylized examples of individual projects. And the third part presents some rough empirical guidance drawn from a sample of actual investment projects.

Download or read book A Review of the Political Economy of Governance written by Philip Keefer and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Development Centre Studies The Ladder of Competitiveness How to Climb it written by Cohen Daniel and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2006-10-27 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using empirical data from over 50 countries, this book shows how even small differences in a number of factors combine to boost or block productivity, and proposes two new measures as alternatives to simple comparisons of industrial productivity.

Download or read book Democracy Public Expenditures and the Poor written by Philip Keefer and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Countries vary systematically with respect to the incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods, and to reduce poverty. Even in developing countries that are democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents, and to private transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many. These distortions can be traced to imperfections in political markets, that are greater in some countries than in others. The authors review the theory, and evidence on the impact of incomplete information of voters, the lack of credibility of political promises, and social polarization on political incentives. They argue that the effects of these imperfections are large, but that their implications are insufficiently integrated into the design of policy reforms aimed at improving the provision of public goods, and reducing poverty.

Download or read book Industrial Ownership and Environmental Performance written by Hua Wang and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors explore the differences in pollution control performance of industries with different types of ownership in China-state-owned (SOE), collectively- or community-owned (COE), privately owned (POE), companies with foreign direct investment (FDI), and joint ventures. About 1,000 industrial firms in three provinces of China were surveyed, and detailed 1999 firm-level information was obtained. The authors analyzed the differences between firms in receiving and reacting to environmental regulatory enforcement, community pressure, environmental services, as well as in the firm's internal environmental management among the different types of ownership. The authors also conducted econometric analyses on the determinants of pollution discharge performance. The results show that foreign direct investment and collectively-owned enterprises have better environmental performances in terms of water pollution discharge intensity, while state-owned enterprises and privately owned enterprises in China are the worst performers. The results also suggest that collectively-owned enterprises in China do internalize environmental externalities.

Download or read book Financial Regulatory Harmonization and the Globalization of Finance written by Cally Jordan and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the globalizing economy, national policymakers are often forced to accept the challenge of financial integration. Faced with the potentially destabilizing effects of international financial markets, they have to strengthen financial regulation, importing international best practices and aligning domestic with foreign regulation, to avoid destabilizing phenomena of regulatory arbitrage. The authors explore the main features of the ongoing process of worldwide financial regulatory convergence and the role played by the global dissemination of financial standards and codes. They analyze the reasons behind the generalized acceptance of international best practices and the limits of the standards and codes approach to financial regulatory harmonization.

Download or read book Social Polarization Political Institutions and Country Creditworthiness written by Philip Keefer and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Growth Without Governance written by Daniel Kaufmann and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: