Download or read book The Soft Budget Constraint The Emergence Persistence and Logic of an Institution written by Gun Eriksson Skoog and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a story of the soft budget constraint. It seeks an answer to a paradox: the prevalence of the soft budget constraint in spite of the tremendous inefficiencies that it gives rise to, and its persistence in spite of reform of the system of which it is an integral part. The story aims at increasing our understanding of why the phenomenon exists. By studying the case of state in Tanzania before, during and after socialism, an explanation of the owned enterprises emergence, persistence and logic of the soft budget constraint is suggested. This introductory chapter presents an argument showing why this story is worth telling. It discusses the research topic and how the problem it presents is attacked. THE SOFT BUDGET CONSTRAINT The soft budget constraint is today a popular metaphor. Originally it was seen as a characteristic of the socialist system. It refers to the tendency of primarily state-owned enterprises to have their liquidity gaps or losses accommodated by the state, or some other external funding body, and to the resulting expectations of such bail-out. The concept was coined by the Hungarian economist Hmos Kornai. ' He distinguishes between four major forms of external financial assistance that contribute to the soft budget constraint: soft subsidies, soft taxation, soft credit and soft 2 administrative pricing.
Download or read book The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development written by Matt Andrews and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-11 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Developing countries commonly adopt reforms to improve their governments yet they usually fail to produce more functional and effective governments. Andrews argues that reforms often fail to make governments better because they are introduced as signals to gain short-term support. These signals introduce unrealistic best practices that do not fit developing country contexts and are not considered relevant by implementing agents. The result is a set of new forms that do not function. However, there are realistic solutions emerging from institutional reforms in some developing countries. Lessons from these experiences suggest that reform limits, although challenging to adopt, can be overcome by focusing change on problem solving through an incremental process that involves multiple agents.
Download or read book Entrepreneurship and SME Management Across Africa written by Leona Achtenhagen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on issues related to entrepreneurship and SME management on the African continent by providing insights from different conceptual, empirical and case studies. In doing so, it focuses on context-specific challenges for conducting entrepreneurial activities or business endeavors in smaller firms in the African continent. The book responds to calls for more research about African businesses given the acknowledgement of scholars, students and policy makers around the world who realize the increasing and growing economic importance of the African continent. In addition to serving as a source book for more in-depth studies by assisting the reader in gaining increased understanding of the topics covered, complementing the different parts with reviews, the book also elaborates on issues such political unrest, corruption, untrained personnel and environmental concerns. Entrepreneurship and SME Management Across Africa: Context, Challenges, Cases will be useful to academics with an interest in different entrepreneurial contexts in general, and Africa in particular, and for students interested in regional business practices, as well as for practitioners and policy makers.
Download or read book From Crisis to Growth in Africa written by Mats Lundahl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-05 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with the problem of achieving sustained economic growth in thirteen African countries. Structural adjustments designed to remove imperfections have made it difficult for the market system to work optimally.
Download or read book International Bibliography of Economics 1998 written by Compiled by the British Library of Political and Economic Science and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1999-12-16 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned for its international coverage and rigorous selection procedures, this series provides the most comprehensive and scholarly bibliographic service available in the social sciences. Arranged by topic and indexed by author, subject and place-name, each bibliography lists and annotates the most important works published in its field during the year of 1997, including hard-to-locate journal articles. Each volume also includes a complete list of the periodicals consulted.
Download or read book The Samaritan s Dilemma written by Clark C. Gibson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-09-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What's wrong with foreign aid? Many policymakers, aid practitioners, and scholars have called into question its ability to increase economic growth, alleviate poverty, or promote social development. At the macro level, only tenuous links between development aid and improved living conditions have been found. At the micro level, only a few programs outlast donor support and even fewer appear to achieve lasting improvements. The authors of this book argue that much of aid's failure is related to the institutions that structure its delivery. These institutions govern the complex relationships between the main actors in the aid delivery system and often generate a series of perverse incentives that promote inefficient and unsustainable outcomes. In their analysis, the authors apply the theoretical insights of the new institutional economics to several settings. First, they investigate the institutions of Sida, the Swedish aid agency, to analyze how that aid agency's institutions can produce incentives inimical to desired outcomes, contrary to the desires of its own staff. Second, the authors use cases from India, a country with low aid dependence, and Zambia, a country with high aid dependence, to explore how institutions on the ground in recipient countries also mediate the effectiveness of aid. Throughout the book, the authors offer suggestions about how to improve aid's effectiveness. These suggestions include how to structure evaluations in order to improve outcomes, how to employ agency staff to gain from their on-the-ground experience, and how to engage stakeholders as "owners" in the design, resource mobilization, learning, and evaluation processes of development assistance programs.
Download or read book Asia Africa Development Divergence written by David Henley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have South-East Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam been so successful in reducing levels of absolute poverty, while in African countries like Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania, despite recent economic growth, most people are still almost as poor as they were half a century ago? This book presents a simple, radical explanation for the great divergence in development performance between Asia and Africa: the absence in most parts of Africa, and the presence in Asia, of serious developmental intent on the part of national political leaders.
Download or read book Environment and Development Economics written by Scott Barrett and published by . This book was released on 2014-04 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book honours Partha Dasgupta, and the field he helped establish; environment and development economics. It concerns the relationship between social systems and natural systems. Above all, it concerns the poverty-environment nexus: the complex pathways by which people become or remain poor, and resources become or remain overexploited.
Download or read book The Constitution of Development written by S. Shivakumar and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-10-13 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the foundations of development, Shivakumar describes how societies can reconstitute themselves to improve their developmental well-being. He argues that the unitary state focus in theory and practice limits the creative potential of individuals to improve their mutual well-being through crafting capabilities for self-governance. This is a significant contribution to current discussions on institutional foundations of development, providing practical guidance on what it means to constitute a government that facilitates rather than impedes progress.
Download or read book Tanzania written by Arne Bigsten and published by Nordic Africa Institute. This book was released on 2001 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What fate awaits Tanzania? Economic progress since 1995 provides some hope that the future is bright.
Download or read book Aid and Reform in Africa written by Shantayanan Devarajan and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finally, when the country enters the second generation of reforms, such as public sector institutional reform, short-term, conditionality-based aid can once again be harmful - by reducing ownership, participation, and sustainability of the reform process."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Political Economy of Predation written by Mehrdad Vahabi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses conflict theory through one type of conflict in particular: manhunting, or predation.
Download or read book Tanzania in Transition written by Kjell J. Havnevik and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive contribution to understanding the character of important societal transitions in Tanzania during Benjamin Mkapa's presidency (1995 2005). The analyses of the trajectory of these transitions are conducted against the background of the development model of Tanzanian's first president, Julius Nyerere (1961 1985), a model with lasting influence on the country. This approach enables an understanding of continuities and discontinuities in Tanzania over time in areas such as development strategy an ideology, agrarian-land, gender and forestry issues, economic liberalization, development assistance, corruption and political change. The period of Mkapa's presidency is particularly important because it represents the first phase of Tanzania's multi- party political system. Mkapa's government initially faced a gloomy economic situation. Although Mkapa's crusade against corruption lost direction, his presidency was characterised by relatively high growth rates and a stable macro-economy. Rural and agrarian transitions were dominated by diversification rather than productivity growth and transformation. Rural attitudes in favour of land markets emerged only slowly but formal land disputes showed more respect for women's rights. Some space emerged for widening local participation in forest management, but rural dynamics was mainly found in trading settlements feeding on economic liberalization and artisanal mining. The transitions documented and analysed of Mkapa's presidency, however, indicate only limited transformational change. Rural poverty is therefore likely to remain deep and the sustainability of economic development to be at risk in the future. Mkapa was, however, able to protect the legacy of peace and political stability of Nyerere, but there were nevertheless important challenges to the first multiparty elections and governance, and particularly in Zanzibar. The post- script (covering 2005 2010), indicates that the incumbent president, Jakaya Kikwete, has yet to prove that he can change this legacy of Mkapa. The contributions to the eleven chapters of this book are evenly shared between Tanzanian, Nordic and other European researchers with a long-term commitment to Tanzanian development research. The book is dedicated to the youth of Tanzania.
Download or read book States at Work written by Thomas Bierschenk and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-01-30 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: States at Work explores the mundane practices of state-making in Africa by focussing on the daily functioning of public services and the practices of civil servants.
Download or read book Transition Taxation and the State written by Gerard Turley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In economic terms three of the most important and controversial issues of our times are transition, taxation and the role of the state. This book examines the core associated problems of tax payment and collection in the context of transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy and the persistence of the 'soft budget' constraint. While differences between the experiences of transition states vary, the attitude of the state towards the control of the tax discipline, its efficiency and vulnerability to corruption is shown to be a key issue, in particular when political constraints are often more pressing than tax design or economic constraints. Transition, Taxation and the State will prove detailed and enlightening reading for all those concerned with tax administration in transition countries from both economic and political perspectives.
Download or read book IT Project Governance written by Magnus Mähring and published by EFI at SSE. This book was released on 2002 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Journal of Economic Literature written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
