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This paper reviews the historical evidence on the relationship between globalisation and economic growth. Divergence in the growth of income and industrialisation in the twentieth century is documented but it is also noted that international income inequality appears to have decreased since about 1870 and that long-run trends in the Human Development Index are much less pessimistic about the experience of developing countries. It is argued that trade liberalisation has been good for growth on average but that successful capital liberalisation requires high institutional quality and that the developmental state may have an important role to play in the early stages of development. The recent claim by Robert Lucas that the 21st century will see a massive reduction in income inequality across countries in a globalised world economy is sceptically discussed in the context of empirical evidence that bad institutions are often persistent and that geography is still a major factor in explaining international income differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper criticises the World Bank as overly optimistic with respect to its ability to fine-tune development aid and to focus it on countries with ‘good’ policies rather than on countries with ‘poor’ policies in order to raise its effectiveness. It is shown that recipient regions showed very different patterns of aid inflows and economic growth in the past and that aid flows yielded the highest correlation to growth when their magnitudes shrank. It is furthermore argued that categorising countries by quality of domestic policies is not only questionable at a given point of time especially in countries with failing governmental institutions and open borders as in many African countries. It suffers also from incentive problems so that countries receiving more aid can become victims of changes in their domestic policies which are more permissive and etatist to the disadvantage of private agents. The paper instead pleads for a shift to aid policies decoupled from country-specifics and more oriented to fundamental ‘beyond border’ problems of the well-being of the poor. An international endowment fund under supranational law should finance research and implementation of research findings related to common international goods as it was suggested by Sachs concerning aids and tropical disease research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problems of developing countries are well documented and they appear to be growing in magnitude. Although science and technology (S&T) offers a glimmer of hope in dealing with problems of developing countries, policy formulation and implementation have not yielded the desired results. The reasons advanced for the failure of S&T to aid in national development tend to be fragmented and are usually based on the mechanistic worldview. This tends to perpetuate mistakes in policy formulation and implementation. A systemic framework is thus advanced in this paper to enable us to understand the problems encountered in S&T policy formulation. It is hoped that the framework will enable us to start trying to solve the right problem rather than the wrong problems advanced by mechanistic thinkers. The systemic framework advances the following set of problems as critical: inappropriate norms of a nation, inappropriate worldview, and human behavioural constraints in managing complexity. These problems manifest themselves as Kenneth Boulding's (1966) pathologies of intellectual productivity—spurious saliency, unproductive emulation, and cultural lag—resulting in ineffective S&T policy. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Review of Policy Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates the factors driving manufacturing growth accelerations in a sample of 134 developing countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We first identify growth acceleration episodes of manufacturing value added (MVA) by their year of initiation and according to a country's income classification. We then estimate a probit model to explain what factors predict these MVA growth accelerations. Our results show that human capital and institutions represent contextual factors that favor the growth of manufacturing, together with macroeconomic policies related to investment, and openness to foreign trade and capital. We also find that most of these factors not only foster episodic accelerations of industry, but they contribute as well to a sustained process of industrialization that characterized the process of economic growth of a few successful countries over the period 1970 to 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries benefit from the registration of geographical indications (GIs) in the agricultural and artisan sectors. The extension of GIs to the artisan sector serves as a best practice to Nigeria. Nigeria has many indigenous forms of cultural artworks that are influenced by the environment. Artworks from places like Benin and other regions in Nigeria are location specific. This paper explores generally the utilization of GIs to protect cultural artworks and the monetary and nonmonetary benefits of such works. The trend of registering GIs to protect culture, arts, and traditional knowledge is crucial to the economic growth of Nigeria otherwise it deprives those dependent on the creation of cultural artworks of a means to benefit from their hard work by a process known to them for decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How far does mobility of multinational banks solve problems of financial development? Using a panel of 80,000 loans over 7 years, I show that greater cultural and geographical distance between a foreign bank's headquarters and local branches leads it to further avoid lending to "informationally difficult" yet fundamentally sound firms requiring relational contracting. Greater distance also makes them less likely to bilaterally renegotiate, and less successful at recovering defaults. Differences in bank size, legal institutions, risk preferences, or unobserved borrower heterogeneity cannot explain these results. These distance constraints can be large enough to permanently exclude certain sectors of the economy from financing by foreign banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper returns to the question of what is the correct structural form for the relationship between aid, other financial flows, and economic growth rates, using a cross-section approach and -- for the first time -- data for the entire 1980s as well as the 1960s and 1970s. For the 1980s the aggregate partial regression coefficient of aid on growth emerges, for the first time, as positive and Gust) significant, although this result does not survive the partitioning of the sample into sub-groups. It remains obvious that the effect of aid on growth is country-specific, and in the later part of the paper we test a new approach under which aid effectiveness passes through a cycle, first increasing and then diminishing as a country's stage of economic development alters. If this approach is accepted (and the initial results, with an informal test, are promising) the overall cross-section relationship between aid and growth, abstracting from other influences, will be neutral in most periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some of the arguments of the critics of foreign aid and other capital inflows to less developed countries (LDCs). The paper finds that the critics lack sufficient evidence on the supposedly adverse effect of capital transfers to LDCs on their savings and growth of incomes. This, however, does not mean that these capital inflows always promote growth in LDCs. In particular, it is shown that the relative importance of foreign capital on economic growth of LDCs would depend on the degree to which that growth is constrained by the lack of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intention of this paper is to examine the political and administrative limits on the effective implementation of privatization in developing countries and so to present a challenge to the view that slow progress is primarily attributable to economic constraints. After examining these economic aspects, the paper provides an explanatory framework which incorporates those political and administrative processes central to an understanding of what happens to state economic policies in practice. The significance of these processes is demonstrated by drawing on research material from India, Pakistan, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. The conclusion drawn is that responses to pressures for economic reform will be determined, not so much by economic criteria as by the political and bureaucratic resources available to decision makers. Since policy processes in developing countries show considerable variety it is likely that there will be substantial variations in the practical achievement of privatization objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new economic geography ( NEG) has been tested to explain the spatial concentration of wages in developed countries, but it has not been evaluated for developing countries where the excessive spatial concentration seems to be related with negative consequences on the economic development. This paper covers this gap in the literature estimating by first time a NEG model for a developing country such as Chile, pursuing two research question: (1) Can the NEG explain the spatial distribution of wages in a developing country as Chile?; and (2) How can the NEG be used to infer information about the future level of spatial concentration of wages in Chile? The results suggest that the case of Chile is poorly explained by the NEG and even higher level of spatial concentration should be expected in the future. These results indicate that the empirical application of NEG is not trivial for developing countries, and some considerations such as inclusion of the first nature or analysis at micro data level must be incorporated by future researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a dynamic spatial framework, this paper investigates how foreign direct investment ( FDI), foreign aid and remittances impact the economic growth of 53 African and 34 Latin American and Caribbean countries. Previous growth studies examine how one factor or two of these factors impacts economic growth, which results in biased estimation because of the omitted variable(s). Separate estimation shows foreign aid and FDI affects economic growth in Africa, but when we control for all three factors, only FDI affects African economic growth. For Latin America and the Caribbean, foreign aid and remittances affect growth when estimated separately, while remittances affect growth when they are estimated simultaneously. Finally, both regions' results confirm spatial interdependence is important in explaining economic growth, as growth in one country depends on the growth of its neighboring countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using annual data, the paper studies the time-series evidence regarding the allocation of fluctuations in the exchange rate between demand components, real growth and price inflation in a sample of developing and advanced countries. Subsequently, cross-country correlations establish the relevance of fluctuations in imports to the pass-through channel of exchange rate fluctuations to economic activity. Further, the evidence evaluates the direct effects of fluctuations in the nominal values of imports on price inflation and real growth. Cross-country regressions evaluate the effects of variation in the average and variability of exchange rate fluctuations on import growth. Subsequently, variation in indicators of macroeconomic performance (real growth, price inflation and the growth of private consumption and investment) is evaluated with respect to variation in the exchange rate and/or import growth. In developing countries, the evidence indicates the relevance of fluctuations in import growth to the transmission mechanism of exchange rate fluctuations to the macroeconomy. Where this relationship dominates, fluctuations in the exchange rate are no longer significant to the difference in macroeconomic indicators, having controlled for variation in import growth across countries. In advanced countries, import fluctuations may be transmitted to economic activity, further to fluctuations in the exchange rate, in line with variations in terms of trade. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the notion of a 'developmental state' and shows that China possesses the relevant characteristics. It explains the political economy which generated such a state in China. It analyses the institutions and methods that were introduced to create a developmental state, in particular the incentive structures that the leadership used to solve the principal-agent problem implicit in having centralised political control but decentralised economic management. These include personnel policies, fiscal decentralisation and patronage relationships. That leads to a review of its successes, limitations and adverse consequences and to the question: can China's developmental state be sustained? Among these issues are the great socioeconomic changes that rapid economic growth has entailed - which have strengthened the case for broadening government policy objectives beyond the previous narrow focus on growth. Conclusions are drawn for both China and other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to assess the relationship between credit market development and economic growth for a heterogeneous panel of 20 developing and developed countries with varied growth experiences. The empirical study is based on estimations of generalized method of moments (GMM) and pooled mean group (PMG) on heterogeneous panel data model. Difference GMM estimation indicates that credit market development has a negative effect on economic growth. This result is robust for our full sample and for the subsample of non-OECD countries, but not for the subsample of OECD countries. However, using a PMG model, we provide evidence of a positive impact in the long run between credit market development and economic growth. When considering heterogeneity in the short-run relationship across countries, our findings suggest that the credit-growth relationship is specific across countries, depending on each country-specific legal and macroeconomic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global agenda of sustainable development (SD) will get a major boost from the successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in developing countries. This requires effective planning and understanding of the SDGs at the national level and developing sound SDG indicators that account for country priorities. Currently, there is no formal SDG indicator set in India, but the process for it is underway. This paper has attempted to propose a unique technique for identifying the most representative indicator set for SD measurement in India based on the SDGs. Considering the needs and preferences of the country, a three‐stage process is proposed to develop the priority indicator set. The application of the approach has been presented for SDG 7, which relates to energy. This is supported with a background on India's SD progress. The proposed technique is simple yet effective, and can be easily replicated by other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper argues that recent developments in practice and theory provide a more promising basis for public service reform in developing countries than we have had since at least the turn of the century. There have been significant instances of large‐scale reform success, such as Nepal's Public Service Commission and Malaysia's delivery unit, Pemandu, and also “pockets of effectiveness” in individual agencies in many countries. They contribute to a more fruitful and diverse repertoire of reform approaches than generally realized. Policymakers can draw on all those instances and types of reform, together with relevant rich country experiences, as they improvise and tailor responses to their always unique reform problems. Proceeding in this way helps reformers to expand the “reform space” available within the political economy. Donors can help reformers if they facilitate reform in the spirit of the Busan Partnership rather than impose their preferred models. In short, the new direction which this paper identifies can be stated as creative problem solving by local actors facilitated by sympathetic donors, building on examples of reform success and drawing on a repertoire of poor and rich country reform approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographers first identified aquaculture as an important field of study during the 1990s, pointing to a 'net deficit' in geographical knowledge about the activity. This paper examines how far geographers have come in bridging this knowledge deficit in the last 20 years. While increasing attention has focused on the political economy of export products consumed in the global North, 'everyday' geographies of aquaculture production and consumption in the global South have been neglected. We argue that paying greater attention to everyday aquaculture in the global South provides opportunities for geographers to engage with wider questions around development and change that extend far beyond aquaculture. By focusing on changing patterns of aquaculture production for Southern domestic markets, geographers can provide a counterpoint to Northern dominated agro-food studies by re-emphasising the importance of consumption, urbanisation and agrarian transitions from a more place-based perspective and, in doing so, support the development of theory that reflects Southern realties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Tourism in small island developing states (SIDS) has long been defined in terms of dependency. However, less attention has been paid to the role of the state in SIDS, particularly the extent to which it supports tourism as an agent of development. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to consider the governance of tourism development in SIDS, specifically the extent to which the state may promote or hinder tourism-related development. Drawing on research in Zanzibar, it reveals the ways in which poor governance has acted as a barrier to development through tourism, concluding that the state has an unwillingness to support tourism. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The price surveys from the 2005 International Comparison Program (ICP) imply substantially lower levels of GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) for many developing countries than prior estimates. While some observers have questioned the data, this paper argues that the pattern of changes in PPPs between ICP rounds makes economic sense. Consistently with the original Balassa-Samuelson model, more rapidly growing economies experienced steeper increases in their PPPs relative to official exchange rates. This effect was even stronger for poor countries. Taking account of this effect would reduce the need for such large data revisions when new ICP data become available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether and to what extent evident trade reform, falling average tariffs and rising exports in recent decades overstate the extent to which protectionism has declined in developing countries, especially low-income developing countries. It identifies remaining significant protection, especially of final manufactured goods; this being associated with the presence of peak tariffs, escalating tariff structures by stage of production and replacement of old forms of non-tariff protection with new instruments of non-tariff protection. It also identifies significant protection arising from high international trade costs induced by inefficiencies in transportation, ports and customs, and from the growth of exports to preference-receiving, export markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows evidence of strong heterogeneity in the relationship between government size and growth, depending on the quality of public sector institutions. Focusing on a wide sample of developed and developing countries over the period 1981-2005, we find that government size reduces growth when bureaucracy quality is low, whereas no significant effect is observed for sufficiently high levels of bureaucracy quality. The results hold both in cross-section and panel data analyses and are robust to a large number of robustness checks. These findings have important implications for assessing the role of government size in economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the causality between remittances and economic growth in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. We employ the panel Granger causality testing approach that is based on seemingly unrelated regressions systems and Wald tests with country-specific bootstrap critical values. Using annual data over the period 1980-2007 for 20 SSA countries, we find that in any SSA country, there is no causality between remittances and growth. An explanation of why remittances do not increase growth in SSA countries is given by the causality test that shows that remittances do not increase physical capital investment. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Over the past two decades, there has been unprecedented attention to the promotion of human development via government spending in the social sectors as a conditio sine qua non for economic growth and improved aggregate welfare. Yet the existing evidence on the subject remains limited and contested. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the causal effect of government spending on the social sectors (health, education and social protection) on three measures of aggregate welfare: the Human Development Index, the Inequality‐adjusted Human Development Index and child mortality rates, using longitudinal data from 55 low‐income and middle‐income countries from 1990 to 2009. We find strong evidence to support the proposition that government social spending has played a significant role in improving aggregate welfare in the developing world. Our results are fairly robust to, inter alia, the method of estimation, the set of control variables and the use of alternative samples and instruments. © 2017 UNU‐WIDER. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides empirical evidence that there is no convergence between the GDP per-capita of the developing countries since 1950. Relying upon recent econometric methodologies (non-stationary long-memory models, wavelet models and time-varying factor representation models), we show that the transition paths to long-run growth (the catch-up dynamics) are very persistent over time and non-stationary, thereby yielding a variety of potential steady states (conditional convergence). Our findings do not support the idea according to which the developing countries share a common factor (such as technology) that eliminates per-capita output divergence in the very long run. Instead, we conclude that growth is an idiosyncratic phenomenon that yields different forms of transitional economic performance: growth tragedy (some countries with an initial low level of per-capita income diverge from the richest ones), growth resistance (with many countries experiencing a low speed of growth convergence), and rapid convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing empirical studies and policy reports provide ambiguous results on the growth effect of foreign aid flows in the recipient countries. The present paper examines whether there exists an aid threshold that determines the growth impact of foreign aid. We use a threshold regression methodology to estimate growth specifications and the associated aid thresholds in a sample of 42 aid recipients covering the period 1970-2000. Our findings indicate that there is a threshold level of aid, above which the growth impact of aid becomes positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many low- and middle-income countries are achieving good rates of economic growth, while high inequality remains a priority concern. Some countries meanwhile have low growth, high inequality, and pervasive poverty-often linked to their fragility. There is now active debate on how countries should set themselves goals for achieving both absolute poverty reduction and lower inequality. But policy action needs to be better served by analysis and data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'green tourism' is often used in conjunction with the desire for a balanced approach to tourism planning. 'Green tourism' is defined as tourism that enhances the local cultural elements, operating under the control of local communities, providing employment and maintaining the economic benefits within the local communities. In fact, the above definition is often poorly attested, since there are times when the economic benefits escape from local communities. For its part the tourist industry uses the term 'green tourism' as a message to tourists on energy saving, avoiding coastal pollution etc. Sometimes the same tourist businesses are accused of using the label 'green' primarily for marketing purposes. This paper shows that governments have a crucial role regarding encouragement to use cleaner technologies in the tourism sector and presenting different approaches for sustainability to be achieved in developing countries. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does foreign direct investment (FDI) into developing countries affect the growth of local firms in host countries? Using a dataset of 38 sectors in China's electrical and electronics industry, in this paper, we analyze whether FDI has a positive effect on local firms, with technology spillovers, added value and increasing total factor productivity, or a negative, market stealing, effect. Estimating the relationship between growth of local firms and investment of foreign firms, our results show that FDI is likely to have a negative impact on the growth of local firms in sectors with large disparities in technology and less experience in business. Therefore, local firms lacking in technology need to find markets with no competition from foreign firms or determine strategies to compensate technology disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the relationship between regional trade agreements, trade integration and economic growth in 21 South and South-East Asian countries over the period from 1980 to 2004. We aim to answer the following questions. First, how does the trade policy of a given country (and countries within the same region) affect a nation's domestic growth? Second, should developing economies in South and South-East Asia engage in regional trade agreements (RTA) or move towards broad liberalization? Our results show that openness of either a single country or of its neighbors does not affect a nation's growth and that the impacts of RTA are unclear (if not detrimental to growth in some cases, once endogeneity is accounted for). Panel Granger-causality tests running from openness to growth yield mixed results and some conclusions depend on the particular subsample under scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Indigenous people in the poorest developing countries of the world confront the most severe hardships, nevertheless even in the most developed countries such as Australia, Indigenous standards of living in terms of economic, educational and basic human standards are far inferior to other groups within society. It has been argued that Indigenous affairs in Australia is divided into 'two ideological tribes' both vigorously opposed with respect to the preferred manner in which the substantial disadvantage of Indigenous Australians can be overcome. Although more complex categorisations of ideological positions are possible, both maintain considerable influence within the field of Indigenous policy formulation in Australia and in the Northern Territory in particular, where nearly 30 per cent of the total population is Indigenous. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the central arguments advanced by these two sides of the debate and the implications for public policy decision making and Indigenous people, within the context of the Northern Territory of Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, interest has soared in the development potential of well-designed cash transfer programs. One particular application is the use of transfers by resource-rich countries (as recently initiated by Iran) to distribute rents across their populations. An emerging body of research suggests that the development impact of such programs tends to be positive and that, especially when received by poor individuals or households, they can unlock constraints on economic activities, allowing a further increase in income. This paper considers the use of biometric technology to underpin transfer programs and how new technology is opening up possibilities for effective transfer programs that, up to now, have only been a theoretical option in the institutional conditions that prevail in many developing countries. Once implemented, biometric identification systems can be used to support a wide range of other development initiatives including banking, voting, health care, and general identification systems. The paper reviews some of the programs using these technologies and how it is enabling poor countries to leapfrog rich ones in the area of identity, much as the cellphone revolution did in the area of communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the economic literature on the effects of food aid on recipient developing countries. It reviews the conceptual and empirical challenges associated with evaluating the impact of food aid and surveys the main analytical techniques that are used in such evaluations. It then summarises the available empirical evidence on the effect of food aid on national economic development, domestic agricultural production and markets, commercial trade and the nutritional status of recipients. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective relations between states and business have been increasingly identified as an important institution for sustaining economic development. This paper constructs quantitative indices measuring the quality of state-business relations (SBRs) across Indian states in the 1985-2008 period. It represents the first effort to systematically characterise SBRs across sub-national units within a country without resorting to subjective surveys. We discuss the possible sensitivity of the indices to minor and major definitional changes and examine the evolution of SBRs across Indian states and at the national level through the study of cross-sectional and secular trends in these indices. The results suggest that SBRs have improved over time in all states barring Bihar. Rankings of states in terms of the SBR index show varying time trends-stable and high ranks for states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, stable and low ranks for states like Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, rapidly improving ranks for states like Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan and swift deterioration in ranks for states like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pessimistic flavour of the Human Development Reports appears to be in contradiction with their own numbers as developing countries fare comparatively better in human development than in per capita GDP terms. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by providing a new, 'improved' human development index (IHDI), informed by welfare economics. The IHDI is presented here alongside the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) HDI for the world and its main regions since the late 19th century. Social dimensions in the IHDI are derived, following ( Journal of Development Economics 41 (1993), pp. 307-336), with a convex achievement function, whereas a geometric average is employed to combine its dimensions (longevity, knowledge and income). Thus, the IHDI does not conceal the gap between rich and poor countries and casts a much less optimistic view than the conventional UNDP index, while it fits with the UNDP concern for international differences. The paper's findings highlight main weaknesses in human development dimensions of present-day developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper quantifies and analyses the extent of restrictions on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in the service sector in developed and developing countries. Services account for an increasing share of global FDI. Recognition of the economic benefits of FDI clashes with nationalistic economic, political and national security concerns about foreign takeover of ‘strategic’ sectors, such as telecommunications, finance and transport. Consequently, almost all countries impose restrictions on FDI in services. Several different types of restrictions are considered: limitations on foreign ownership, screening or notification procedures, management restrictions and operational restrictions. These restrictions on FDI are computed at the industry level and then aggregated into a single measure for the service sector as a whole for 23 developed and 50 developing countries. Notwithstanding the worldwide trend towards liberalisation of restrictions, there remain substantial disparities between regions and individual countries in the severity of restrictions on inward FDI in services. The lowest restriction scores are in Europe and Latin America, whereas East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East have the highest levels of restrictions. The evolution over time of FDI restrictions is also presented for developed countries over the period 1981–2005, showing liberalisation in all countries, especially since the early 1990s, although to varying extents across countries. The severity of restrictions also differs considerably by sector, with electricity, telecommunications, transport and finance most restricted. The paper also finds a strong negative correlation of restrictiveness with inward stocks of FDI in services, suggesting that restrictions impede FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Libyan government emphasises the importance of tourism in economic diversification through its Libyan Tourism Master Plan identifying various initiatives to develop the Libyan tourism industry, including human resource development (HRD). Hotels are key to an internationally competitive industry and human resources critical to perceptions of service quality. This paper analyses issues relating to the Libyan hotel sector, including the need to strengthen the private sector; to match education/training programmes to industrial needs, and to address cultural and religious dimensions which exacerbate poor industry image. The paper identifies a partnership approach between governmental, educational and hotel sectors to address HRD issues through workforce planning. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use the Kumar and Russell [ American Economic Review (2002) Vol. 92, pp. 527–548] growth-accounting procedure to examine cross-country growth during the 1990s. Using a data set comprising developed, newly industrialized, developing and transitional economies, we decompose the growth of output per worker into components attributable to technological catch-up, technological change and capital accumulation. In contrast to the study by Kumar and Russell, which concludes that capital deepening is the major force of growth and change in the world income per worker distribution over the 1965–90 period, our analysis shows that, during the 1990s, the major force in the further divergence of the rich and the poor is due to technological change, whereas capital accumulation plays a lesser and opposite role. Finally, although on average we find that transitional economies perform similar to the rest of the world, the procedure is able to discover some interesting patterns within the set of transitional countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper models the allocation of bilateral foreign development aid to developing countries. A simple theoretical framework is developed, in which aid is treated as a private good of a donor country bureaucratic group responsible for bilateral aid allocation. This model is applied to time series data for ten principal recipients of bilateral official development assistance. Features of this application are that it caters for the joint determination of aid allocations and for donor allocation behavior to differ among individual recipient countries. Results indicate that both recipient need and donor interest variables determine the amount of foreign aid to developing countries, and that donor allocation behavior often differs markedly among recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous aid effectiveness research often claims that foreign aid has been unsuccessful in increasing growth rates. This result could be due either to methodological weaknesses, or to genuine aid efficiency losses. Empirically, the author finds that once the best available techniques are employed, aid has a significant but moderate average effect on growth over the period 1970–2001. A promising explanation of why the estimated returns to aid are not larger is that bilateral aid had no significant effect on growth during the Cold War (pre-1990), but had a significant and sizeable effect thereafter. In contrast, multilateral aid seems to have had sizeable and significant effects throughout. These results imply that the negative conclusions drawn by earlier research should be interpreted in their proper historical context, rather than as a necessary condemnation of current aid effectiveness. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today rapidly growing economies depend more on the creation, acquisition, distribution, and use of knowledge. As such, strategies for enhancing research and innovation capabilities have come to occupy a more important position in many developing nations, including China. Already the leading production center, and often seen as China's economic locomotive, Shanghai is striving aggressively to retain its national preeminence and has launched concerted efforts to increase local innovative output. The primary purpose of this paper is to understand how state-led efforts have fared in promoting technology innovation. By situating the city in the national and global context, the paper shows that Shanghai has gained a substantial lead in developing an innovation environment with extensive global linkages and leading research institutions. Recent efforts in building up the research and innovation capacity of the enterprise sector have begun to show progress. Although firms are enthusiastic about its future as an innovation center, Shanghai continues to face challenges of inadequate protection of intellectual property, lack of venture capital investment, and the tightening supply of highly qualified knowledge workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigates the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles and the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations. From regressions on the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles, we find that the government's current expenditures and subsidies & transfers move counter-cyclically, whereas taxes and capital expenditures move pro-cyclically. Using economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries as an instrumental variable, we show that ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates understate the responsiveness of fiscal policy to economic fluctuations. We also find that fiscal policy responds asymmetrically over economic fluctuations. In investigating the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations, we mitigate omitted variable bias by adding four important factors - military expenditures, oil production, economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries and fiscal policy responsiveness to business cycles. The results of effectiveness regressions are consistent with the responsiveness regressions, highlighting the importance of current expenditures, especially subsidies and transfers, in responding to business cycles and stabilising the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The successful industrialization and catch up of countries in the East Asian region gave rise to an important debate concerning the role played by technological learning and knowledge creation. This paper seeks to examine this issue for Indonesia, a second-tier newly industrializing country. It focuses on the relative importance of learning from imported inputs vis-à-vis other factors influencing productivity in manufacturing. The concept of learning is operationalized drawing on the literature on technology spillovers on the one hand, and the literature on catch up à la Abramovitz, on the other. Our results indicate that knowledge spillovers have become significant contributors to labor productivity growth after the liberalization of the Indonesian economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces salient aspects of the evolution of fiscal policy in sub-Saharan Africa since 1960 and highlights the need for further reforms to consolidate the gains of the recent past. The fiscal position of the sub-Saharan African region as a whole has improved markedly during the past ten years, but most countries still face formidable fiscal challenges. To consolidate the progress made during the past decade and to tackle the remaining problems, sub-Saharan African policymakers should remain firmly committed to sound fiscal policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the possible effects of the US reform of the international settlement rate system on telecommunications investment in Africa. We estimate a telecommunications investment equation using a panel data of 51 African countries during the 1991–2003 period and find that settlement payments have significantly positive effects on telecommunications investment in African countries. A 10 percent increase in settlement payment, on average, increases the telecommunications investment expenditure to GDP ratio by 3.4 percent over a three-year period. Using previously calculated revenue loss from the US reform, our estimates suggest that African countries stand to lose between 4.4 to 11 percentage points of their telecommunications investment in the medium run and with it, possible decreases in income growth rate. However, we argue that African countries can counter the effects of this revenue loss by increasing the efficiency of telecommunications investment through appropriate market restructuring, including the promotion of competition and privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is understood and perceived in Estonia – a post-socialist country that has recently become capitalist. In order to understand the importance of the context, this paper offers an overview of the main results of surveys conducted about the transition process in Estonia and presents the different development stages describing business purposes and perceived responsibilities in the last 20 years in Estonia. The purpose of business and corporate responsibility, or CSR, is a topic that has been widely discussed and debated in most developed countries of the world. Over the past 20 years, the field has grown rapidly, and it is still gaining importance every day.

This paper constructs a dynamic North–South trade model with outsourcing and endogenous innovation. Production of high quality goods is first performed in the North (Northern phase), then split between the North and the South (Outsourcing phase), and finally shifted to the South (Southern phase). This cycle is reignited whenever a Northern firm innovates a higher quality product. We find that an increase in the fraction of outsourced production raises the Northern skill premium unambiguously, while raising the Southern skill premium if and only if the skill intensity of outsourced production is higher than that of local Southern production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key goal of renewable resource managers in developing countries is to take actions to ensure that the resource being managed stays away from irreversible or crisis states, in which it provides neither consumptive nor non-consumptive services to humans. However, despite a manager's best efforts, the resource may still hit a crisis state. Therefore, given a particular management regime, it is useful to know how long it takes until the resource hits a crisis state. In this paper, the authors provide a theoretical analysis of this hitherto unstudied question. They first probabilistically delineate two management regimes. Next, they compute the expected time until crisis for both these regimes. Finally, they provide a numerical example to illustrate the working of their model and then discuss the implications of their findings for renewable resource management in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates various channels through which foreign technology diffuses to the manufacturing sector of developing economies. These economies undertake virtually no own R&D, so they rely on foreign technology to a much larger extent than developed economies. We investigate the direct effect of foreign R&D, as well as technology embodied in imports of intermediate and capital goods and foreign direct investment, on the growth of total factor productivity and value added in the manufacturing sector of 32 economies during 1965–92. We find that foreign R&D typically has the biggest positive impact on domestic productivity and value-added growth. Imports of capital goods and foreign direct investment also play a similar role, but their effect is of smaller magnitude and is not always significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]