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 Social Polarization Political Institutions and Country Creditworthiness written by Philip Keefer and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literature argues that the presence of multiple veto players (government decisionmakers) with polarized interests increases the credibility of sovereign commitments, but reduces the ability of governments to adjust policies in the event of exogenous shocks that jeopardize their ability to honor their commitments. In the case of sovereign lending, if the first effect prevails, countries would be regarded as more creditworthy; if the second, less.Keefer and Knack address two issues. First, using measures of country creditworthiness, they ask whether the net effect of multiple veto players is positive or negative. Second, though, the authors go beyond the existing literature to argue that the net effect of multiple veto players depends on the nature of social polarization in a country. In particular, they argue that political competition is fundamentally different in countries exhibiting ethnic polarization than in countries polarized according to income or wealth. The evidence supports the prediction that multiple veto players matter more when countries are more ethnically polarized, but less when income inequality is greater.This paper - a joint product of the Investment Climate and Public Services Teams, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the interaction of social polarization and institutions.

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

Download or read book Collective Choice written by Jac C. Heckelman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive insight into Mancur Olson's work as well as extensions and applications of his work. Chapters cover three main areas: Collective Action, Institutional Sclerosis and Market-Augmenting Government. Some chapters directly assess Olson`s contributions, focusing on distinguishing what was original in his works from what was already in the literature, and assess his impact on the fields of public economics and economic history. Other chapters present new tests and frequently extend his work. Each of the chapters is a new piece of scholarship inspired by and intended to honor Mancur Olson, and extend his influence to another generation of Collective Choice scholars and researchers.

Download or read book China s Accession to the World Trade Organization written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Does Globalization Hurt the Poor written by Pierre Richard Agenor 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: Agenor attempts to examine analytically and empirically the extent to which globalization affects the poor in low- and middle-income countries. He begins with a description of various channels through which trade openness and financial integration may have an adverse effect on poverty. However, the author also stresses the possible nonlinearities involved-possibilities that have seldom been recognized in the ongoing debate. Agenor then presents cross-country regressions that relate measures of real and financial integration to poverty. The regressions control for changes in income per capita and output growth rates, as well as various other macroeconomic and structural variables, such as the inflation tax, changes in the real exchange rate and the terms of trade, health and schooling indicators, and macroeconomic volatility. The author uses not only individual indicators of trade and financial openness but also a "globalization index" based on principal components analysis, and tests for both linear and nonlinear effects. The results suggest the existence of a nonmonotonic, Laffer-type relationship between globalization and poverty. At low levels, globalization appears to hurt the poor; but beyond a certain threshold, it seems to reduce poverty-possibly because it brings with it renewed impetus for reform. So, globalization may hurt the poor not because it went too far, but rather because it did not go far enough.

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 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 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 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 The Works of Francis Bacon written by Francis Bacon and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2011-11-24 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complete writings of English philosopher Francis Bacon are arranged according to subject matter in this 1857-74 edition.

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:

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 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 In the Red written by Zsofia Barta and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insightful study that identifies the underlying factors contributing to countries continually accumulating immense debt

Download or read book Why We re Polarized written by Ezra Klein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 One of Bill Gates’s “5 books to read this summer,” this New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller shows us that America’s political system isn’t broken. The truth is scarier: it’s working exactly as designed. In this “superbly researched” (The Washington Post) and timely book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us—and how we are polarizing it—with disastrous results. “The American political system—which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president—is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face,” writes political analyst Ezra Klein. “We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole.” “A thoughtful, clear and persuasive analysis” (The New York Times Book Review), Why We’re Polarized reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis. “Well worth reading” (New York magazine), this is an “eye-opening” (O, The Oprah Magazine) book that will change how you look at politics—and perhaps at yourself.