Democracy,property rights and economic growth

What does the global surge in democracy and capitalism portend for economic growth? The shift toward popular government is predicted by some to accelerate growth, by others to retard it. Often left out of the equation is property rights as a factor distinct from democratic rule. Using recent data on 59 less developed and transitional countries, this article explores the relationship among institutional factors and growth in the 1980s and early 1990s. Democratic freedoms and property rights are associated with the dependent variable, suggesting that national income in poor countries stands to gain from recent efforts to implant these institutions.     

The state and economic development

In this article it is argued that one must distinguish between the arbitrary, short-run power of the state and the long-run, infrastructural power of the state. Game theory concepts are used to illustrate these ideas and successful development is linked to the infrastructural power of the state. The evolution of the latter is related to culture/ideology and this is given operational meeting within the context of simple game theory. The historical experience of Japan is utilized to illustrate these ideas. Dr. Richard Grabowski is a professor of economics at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. His research interests include the role of the developmental state in economic development. His work has appeared inWorld Development, Journal of Developing Areas, Economic Development and Cultural Change.     

The environmental sciences and economic development

This article deals with one aspect of the relationship between the environmental sciences and economic development, namely, the relationship between studies of natural resources and the appraisal of agricultural development projects. It reviews some such projects in which no real attention was paid to surveys of natural resources and passes on to consider the land systems approach to the appraisal of land capability and, briefly, the applicability of” benefit/cost analysis to agricultural development projects. Its principal concern, however, is with the lamentable tendency for land resource surveys to be conducted independently of economic enquiry. It enumerates some of the reasons for this state of affairs, and suggests certain possible remedies.     

Country size and economic growth and development

This paper attempts to provide limited empirical evidence on the nature of the relationship between country size and rates of economic growth and levels of economic development, and on the possible effects of trade concentration and dependence on trade on this relationship. It suggests that there is no discernible association between country size and economic development, nor between country size and economic growth, and that neither the dependence on trade of small countries nor their commodity and geographic export concentration are necessarily important factors in economic growth and economic development.     

Democracy,economic crisis and the problem of governance: The case of Bolivia

This article examines the political context within which the Bolivian government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro (1985–1989) launched, implemented, and sustained a draconian neoliberal economic stabilization program. The article argues that the key to the successful economic program was the political skill and leadership of President Paz, in particular, his ability to negotiate a political pact with the main opposition party. Finally, the article ponders the tensions and contradictions between neoliberal economic policies and the process of consolidating democracy in a context of extreme economic crisis. James M. Malloy is professor of political science and research professor, University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. He is the author of a number of books and articles on Latin America politics, includingAuthoritarians and Democrats: Regime Transition in Latin America (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987). He is presently working on issues of regime transition, economic adjustment, and the role of private sector interest groups in Latin America.     

Democracy,development and the executive presidency in Sri Lanka

This paper examines the developmental causes and consequences of the shift from a parliamentary to a semi-presidential system in Sri Lanka in 1978, examining its provenance, rationale and unfolding trajectory. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it sets out an argument that the executive presidency was born out of an elite impulse to create a more stable, centralised political structure to resist the welfarist electoral pressures that had taken hold in the post-independence period, and to pursue a market-driven model of economic growth. This strategy succeeded in its early years, 1978–93, when presidents retained legislative control, maintained a strong personal commitment to market reforms and cultivated alternative sources of legitimacy. In the absence of these factors, the presidency slipped into crisis from 1994–2004 as resistance to elite-led projects of state reform mounted and as the president lost control of the legislature. Between 2005–14, the presidency regained its power, but at the cost of abandoning its original rationale and function as a means to recalibrate the elite–mass power relationship to facilitate elite-led reform agendas.     

Neighborhood challenges to economic development

This article analyzes neighborhood-based development challenges. The article examines six explanations for such challenges: use value, social status, growth, economic and fiscal, governmental structure, and suburban. Using data derived from several sources (survey, Census, I. C.M.A.), the results indicate that cities with higher housing values and reform government structures are more likely to have neighborhood-based development challenges. The analysis is extended to investigate successful neighborhood-based development challenges. These results indicate that a city's poverty rate depresses the potential for successful challenges and that challenges are more likely to be successful in central cities. Finally, the analysis indicates that those cities in which neighborhood groups are motivated by the desire to protect housing values are more likely have successful development challenges.     

Tariffs and economic development: A comment

The optimality criteria of linear programming transportation and spatial equilibrium models never ‘explain ‘ real world flow patterns. This paper provides reasons for the difference between an optimal solution and real world patterns. Data for the linear programming exercises are derived from the four stages of a rice marketing system in Sri Lanka at a time when the state had monopoly control over distribution. The examination of factors more important than transport costs in explaining residual flows sheds some light on policy and institutional problems associated with monopoly procurement.

Substantively, a comparison of the optimal solution with reality shows a fairly high degree of transportation efficiency throughout the system, except at the last stage, where rice changes hands between two parastatal orginisations (the Paddy Marketing Board and the Food Commission) to be distributed to final destinations. Inefficient store locations rather than commodity allocations generate the greatest waste of transport. Reasons for the difference between programming solutions and reality include uncertainty, congestion, policies and institutional structure conducive to a deterioration in quality of the commodity handled, problematic regional preferences for rice type, inadequate communications, unpredictable timing of rice imports and corruption.     

Society, community, and economic development

Studies of economic development and economic history have long been concerned with the relationship between the transparent and supposedly anonymous forces of markets, rules, and bureaucracies, on the one hand, and membership in groups, such as local communities, associations, or networks on the other. Economists are quite divided about these latter forces: for some, they are necessary underpinnings for the market, providing trust and social capital which in turn reduce transaction costs and moral hazards and hence promote development; for most, they are seen as archaic, leading to nepotism, rent seeking, and institutional rigidity. Indeed, throughout the social sciences, there is an opposition between the roles assigned to what may be called the “societal” and the “communitarian” bases of social and economic development. But each position in this theoretical standoff underestimates the contributions of either society or community to economic development. This is because both society and community have potentially positive and negative effects; together, however, they can act as mutual checks and balances on their potentially negative effects, while reinforcing the positive contributions of each to economic efficiency. Different levels and types of society and community, in interaction, define complex contexts of choice and incentives in economic development, and allow us to see more clearly the basis of different institutional configurations in relationship to development. Michael Storper is professor of regional and international development in the School of Public Affairs at UCLA; professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics; and professor of economic sociology at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (“Sciences Po”) in Paris. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.     

Transportation infrastructure and regional economic development in China

This study examines the trend of transportation investment and analyzes the effect of transportation investment on regional economic development in China. Results from cross-section analysis indicate that those provinces that have invested more in transportation infrastructure tend to have greater output.     

德国近年经济和社会调控的特点

进入新世纪,尤其是2004年以来,德国通过改革和调整,修改和制定相关法律和政策,对经济和社会发展进行了全方位调控.这次重大举措令人瞩目,具有以下特点:     

Financial development and economic growth: Additional evidence

This note suggests that, contrary to the conclusions reached in several recent studies, the empirical evidence does not support the view that financial development promotes economic growth. It is first noted that the predominant pattern in the data for 95 individual countries is that of a negligible or weakly negative covariation between financial development and growth of real GDP per capita. Second, the individual‐country correlational picture is a sharp contrast to the correlations based on crosscountry data that have been used in most research on the subject. Third, individual‐country estimates of a basic multiple‐regression growth model also do not indicate a positive association between financial development and growth. Fourth, in cross‐country data and models of the kind that have been used in most studies, when the regression structure is permitted to vary across three subgroups, a huge parametric heterogeneity is observed, and the overall indication is that of a negligible or negative association between financial development and growth.