Determinants of inflationary performance: Corporatist structures vs. central bank autonomy

Thanks go to John Aldrich, Robert Bates, William Bernhard, Richard Burdekin, Henry Chappel, Dudley Wallace and Thomas Willett for suggestions and to Ted Smith for computational assistance.     

THE MARKET FOR INDUSTRY: WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD?

This paper investigates one of the perennial mysteries in the area of state and local finance, the provision of tax and other subsidies to business by federal, state and local governments in the face of solid evidence that such incentives do little to nothing to influence business location or job creation. The paper looks at the upsurge in such governmental aid in the last decade and considers whether this upsurge has occurred because such aid is more efficacious than it used to be or whether it has occurred for political reasons unrelated to its effectiveness.     

Regime transformation from below: Decentralization,local governance,and democratic reform in Nigeria

How realistic are democratic-governance strategies that emphasize local governance as a key component? Using Nigeria’s experience in local government and primary health care in the 1980s and 1990s as a case example, the article finds there were substantial shortfalls in local participation and program performance. These were caused by problems in the local political environment and local institutional design, in the national policy environment (particularly in the funding system), and by the stresses of structural adjustment, resource shortfalls, the natural physical environment, and weak leadership. These combined to create poor and inappropriate reward structures and lack of accountability. However, even though the Nigerian case was not successful, most of the specific problems that hurt it are remediable through policy changes at the national level. Several of these were under consideration at the time of the coups of 1992 and 1993.     

Argentina: Two faces of the small and medium bourgeoisie

Research focused on the socio-economic and political attitudes of the medium and small bourgeois in Argentina during the Alfonsin Presidency. Data reveals clear position critical of the pro-big business orientation of the regime. However because of their shift away from productive activity towards the speculative, because of the increasing dependence on illegal sources of income (the underground economy), the small and medium size bourgeoisie were shifting toward the neo-liberal Right as a means of legalizing their income.