responding to financial crisis the case of jamaica abstract the adverse economic and social effects of the financial crises that have afflicted many developing countries in recent years have highlighted the need to develop a policy response which addresses the vulnerability of financial systems to systemic instability and crisis the article examines the experience of jamaica a country which managed a financial sector crisis during the 1990s without the assistance or involvement of the international monetary fund lessons are drawn from the jamaica case study for the domestic management of banking sector failures in lower income countries

focus on situation and policies for biomass power generation in china abstract nowadays china is faced with many issues such as increasing farmers income protecting environment and adjusting energy structure which may be solved by developing the biomass power generation industry however the lack of technical capability inadequate raw materials and challenges for grid feed in are all obstacles that prevent large scale production and industrialization in the biomass power generation industry therefore government should provide necessary policies to support and advance the biomass power generation industry this paper systematically analyzes the current laws regulations and policies implemented recently in china and provides a comprehensive review of the fiscal subsidies reduction and exemption of taxes tariff concessions the policies of investment and financing and the support of r d suggestions for relevant policies are proposed to address the existing problems

revolution evolution and local government structure an empirical analysis of london conventional analyses of local government structure focus on the revolutionary changes that result from deliberate reorganisations we propose a new perspective on structural change that emphasises the importance of evolutionary processes as well as radical reforms evolutionary changes in structure are caused for example by population growth or decline and reallocations of service responsibilities between tiers the argument is illustrated by an empirical analysis of fragmentation and concentration in the structure of local government in london the evidence reveals that structural change is the norm rather than the exception it occurs even when the absolute number of local government tiers and units is constant

the formal divide customary rights and the allocation of credit to agriculture in tanzania abstractit is generally held that one mechanism to enable inclusive growth in tanzania is enabling farmers to access credit to raise productivity and incomes the formalisation of property rights in tanzania is being undertaken by a multiplicity of actors at great expense to donors individuals and the government while there have been a variety of different justifications for allocating certificates of customary rights of occupancy ccros to farmers in tanzania perhaps the most prominent argument is that it will enable farmers to finally overcome the divide between informal customary rights and the formal banking sector ccros would provide the collateral that would induce banks to lend money to small scale farmers as part of a six year investigation in manyara mbeya and dodoma regions our research team evaluated the impact of formalisation on farmers access to credit the paper will present the results while pointing to the continuing institutional and market imperfections that perpetuate the fo

hospital ownership and performance this study compares the performance of three ownership forms of hospitals for profit private nonprofit and public further classified according to whether or not the hospital is run by a hospital chain data come from a 1979 national survey of u s hospitals the authors find that hospital cost is quite similar among alternative ownership forms as is profitability the results do not provide much empirical support for standard property rights theory several reasons are suggested why this may be so

challenges and opportunities in el salvador s financial sector abstract the formal financial sector has expanded rapidly in postwar el salvador encouraged by premature financial liberalization and a remittance windfall exceeding commercial banks capacities to lend prudently the counterpart of this spurious financial deepening is a shallow financial market for smaller firms which reflects both difficult real conditions for small urban and agricultural enterprises and the unfortunate effects of the credit channeling model characterizing development banks and most nongovernment organization projects this model discourages the growth of small scale institutions that can fund themselves from local resources and limits the ability of small producers to accumulate financial savings

financial sector reform and sustainable development the case of costa rica abstract how can financial sector reform be designed specifically so that it enhances the prospects for sustainable development this paper begins an analysis of this little discussed intersection with a focus on the problems and possibilities facing costa rica policy changes that encourage financial markets to incorporate long term environmental sustainability concerns will require moving beyond a standard model of financial liberalization flighty financial flows systemic pressures against innovation and unpriced environmental externalities all mean that real sector environmental performance will be adversely affected by financial sector dynamics lacking appropriate policy markers financial market policies must encourage market forces to channel capital flows that build productive capabilities based on complementarities between development and environmental quality costa rica s reform process and unusual depth of experience in pursuing sustainable development make it an ideal place for such financial market innovations to be attempted getting its incentive system right in financial restructuring could aid immensely in the emergence and application of sustainability based competitive capabilities a set of market based green financial reforms is proposed including tax advantaged banking and bond programs rural group lending and a single certification entity for potential borrowers in these programs

stock markets corporate finance and economic growth during the past decade the capitalization of emerging markets increased twentyfold in 1994 trading on these markets accounted for about 17 percent of the 9 6 trillion of shares traded on the world s stock markets up from a mere 3 percent of the much smaller 1 6 trillion in 1985 this rapid growth in emerging stock market activity raises critical questions for developing country policymakers what effect do stock markets have on economic growth how does stock market development affect firms financing decision and if stock markets are good for growth what policies can governments adopt to foster their development this note summarizes answers to these questions drawn from a recent research project

bank ownership and performance does politics matter this paper uses a new dataset to reassess the relationship between bank ownership and bank performance providing separate estimations for developing and industrial countries it finds that state owned banks located in developing countries tend to have lower profitability and higher costs than their private counterparts and that the opposite is true for foreign owned banks the paper finds no strong correlation between ownership and performance for banks located in industrial countries next in order to test whether the differential in performance between public and private banks is driven by political considerations the paper checks whether this differential widens during election years it finds strong support for this hypothesis

bureau competition and inefficiency abstract this paper evaluates the claim that an increase in bureau competition will improve efficiency in the public supply of services it gives explicit consideration to the property rights characteristics of a public sector market and to the role of legislators as active demanders of bureau output rather than as passive monitors of bureau production the analysis demonstrates that bureau managers prefer nonprice competition to price competition a major prediction of the paper is that greater bureau competition may increase bureau output costs and budgets

financial development economic growth and banking sector controls evidence from india this paper uses newly collected data from the reserve bank of india to examine the effects of various types of banking sector controls on the process of financial deepening with the exception of a lending rate ceiling these controls are found to influence financial deepening negatively independently of the well known effect of the real interest rate exogeneity tests suggest that financial deepening and economic growth are jointly determined thus policies which affect financial deepening may also have an influence on economic growth the role of banking sector controls in the process of economic development has received considerable attention in the literature the traditional approach due to mckinnon i973 and shaw i973 postulates that government intervention in the pricing and allocation of loanable funds dubbed financial repression inhibits financial development by depressing real interest rates see

the effect of fiscal performance on local government election results in israel 1989 1998 abstract we discuss the circumstances under which voters in local elections will reward fiscal responsibility and suggest that such circumstances evolved in israel in the mid 1990s we present empirical evidence that indeed fiscal performance of mayors substantially affected their reelection probability in the 1998 campaign but not in the 1989 and 1993 campaigns changes in the political environment enforcement of audit and financial reporting requirements tougher imposition of hard budget constraints and the development of local media are proposed as explanations the hypotheses that the fiscal variables reflect the income level at the locality or the mayor s success in extracting resources from the central government are tested and rejected

financing enterprise development in sub saharan africa this paper examines some critical gaps in the financial infrastructure in sub saharan africa which have contributed to the poor performance of productive investment by private agents it first analyses the performance of financial systems encompassing both formal and informal financial sectors in relation to the changing policy environment and key features of the financial market structure it then identifies those gaps in financial services that have been particularly detrimental to private investment enterprise growth and transformation finally the paper considers policy implications drawn from east asian experiences with respect to financial policies institutional arrangements and market integration measures for financing enterprise development copyright 2001 by oxford university press

the paradoxes of the successful state abstract three issues are discussed in this paper first i argue that it is impossible to understand the east asian growth miracle without appreciating the importtant role that government policy played in stimulating private investment second i will summarize some of my work on the determinants of policy effectiveness based on a cross country comparison of export subsidy regimes and show that the usual rules of thumb on what makes for good policy uniformity transparency non selectivity etc are quite useless in predicting which policy regimes perform better in practice third i will provide some evidence that the government s social insurance role creates a complementarity between states and markets these three sets of ideas yield a more balanced and nuanced view of the role of the state in economic development than has recently become commonplace

stock and credit market expansion and economic development in emerging markets further evidence utilizing cointegration analysis this paper empirically investigates the relationship between equity and credit market development and economic growth in a sample of five very important emerging markets in particular employing a multivariate time series methodology to test for long run trends and causality between variables that proxy for stock market development credit market development and economic development the results seem to suggest that equity markets have a role to play only in relatively liberalized economies like chile and mexico in financially repressed economies like india the equity market does not affect real sector growth furthermore the banking crises in the 1980s and 1990s in chile and mexico resulted in a negative relation between economic growth and the credit market in south korea equity and credit markets both affect economic growth but not vice versa in countries where the nature of the stock market has been speculative like taiwan a negative relationship is detected between equity market develo

financial liberalisation institutional transformation and credit allocation in developing countries the world bank and the internationalisation of banking the paper documents and analyses the world bank s promotion of foreign ownership of banking in developing countries in the wake of two decades of financial crises following exercises of orthodox financial reform the world bank has not only continued to push privatisation but now sees foreign banks as the missing component that will deal with the downside risks of financial liberalisation concerns that foreign banks might reduce small and medium enterprise sme loan access because of information problems are largely dismissed by the bank in fact the world bank argues for the very opposite the existence of foreign banks is likely to have the effect of pushing local banks into sme markets where they have a greater comparative advantage the question of access to credit for the private sector particularly the locally owned small and medium size enterprises is central to the issue of employment generation and poverty reduction in developing countries where the bulk of new jobs are typically created by these companies this article traces the development of the world bank s agenda on foreign ownership it critically assesses the arguments and empirical work underlying the world bank analysis and draws on alternative empirical testing and case studies to raise serious questions about the downside risks associated with the internationalisation of banking copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

political economy origins of financial markets in europe and asia summary we provide historical evidence from london amsterdam and hong kong which highlights the essential role played by governments in kick starting financial development in the cases of london and amsterdam the emergence of financial markets was a by product of the rise of large trading monopolies these monopolies partly created to improve public finances were responsible for major financial innovations and helped to strengthen investors property rights in hong kong where the financial development model was bank based a large banking monopoly with close links to both the british and chinese governments set up to finance international trade played a similar role

financial system development in transition economies this paper provides an overview of the major issues with respect to financial system development in transition economies which were discussed at a conference in groningen the netherlands december 1997 after a brief remark on the role of financial system design during economic transition the paper focuses on the role of stock markets in the process of financial intermediation with emphasis on the role of regulations in these markets the role of deposit insurance to improve bank system stability and the importance of an independent central bank measurement issues relating to central bank independence and its impact on inflation and growth 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

bureaucratic discretion or congressional control regulatory policymaking by the federal trade commission this paper extends stigler and peltzman s approach to regulation by incorporating a legislature the model yields comparative statics results and hence testable implications the paper then tests between two opposing approaches about regulatory agency behavior the first assumes agencies operate independently of the legislature and hence exercise discretion the second assumes that congress controls agency decisions the recent behavior of the federal trade commission provides the empirical setting substantial evidence is found for the specific predictions of the model including the hypothesis of systematic congressional influence over ftc decisions

a survey of recent developments in the literature of finance and growth this paper provides a survey of the recent progress in the literature of financial development and economic growth the survey highlights that most empirical studies focus on either testing the role of financial development in stimulating economic growth or examining the direction of causality between these two variables although the positive role of finance on growth has become a stylized fact there are some methodological reservations about the results from these empirical studies several key issues unresolved in the literature are highlighted the paper also points to several directions for future research

the industrial organization of congress or why legislatures like firms are not organized as markets this paper provides a theory of legislative institutions that parallels the theory of the firm and the theory of contractual institutions like market institutions legislative institutions reflect two key components the goals or preferences of individuals here representatives seeking reelection and the relevant transactions costs we present three conclusions first we show how the legislative institutions enforce bargains among legislators second we explain why given the peculiar form of bargaining problems found in legislatures specific forms of nonmarket exchange prove superior to market exchange third our approach shows how the committee system limits the types of coalitions that may form on a particular issue

financial liberalization does it pay to join the party financial liberalization is a highly controversial policy despite the fact that almost all the regions of the world have undergone liberalization of their financial markets its effect on the performance of different economic sectors remains a question in our research we find that financial liberalization reduces the cost of capital boosting the relative growth rates of economic sectors that for technological reasons rely heavily on external to the firm finance this result however depends on the quality of institutions supporting credit markets the effects of financial liberalization are more notable in countries that have and enforce regulations to protect property rights in this sense the answer to the question in the title of the paper is not clear cut the impact of financial liberalization on growth depends on underlying institutional factors

the design of successful rural financial intermediaries evidence from indonesia abstract the success outreach and sustainability of eight rural financial intermediation systems in indonesia in profitably reaching large numbers of small individual clients is explained in terms of organizational design networks of semiautonomous units use local information and contract enforcement mechanisms to lower transaction costs reflecting basic concerns with institutional and financial viability elements of mechanism design have included compatible incentives such as performance based compensations profit sharing collection fees efficiency wages equivalent to quasi equity and system monitoring managerial discretion over transactions conducted at market terms policies to protect portfolio value and no dependency creating subsidies are important interventions have been appropriate for the problem at hand

can financial infrastructures foster economic development in this paper financial infrastructures increase the efficiency of the banking sector they decrease the market power due to horizontal differentiation of the financial intermediaries lower the cost of capital increase the number of depositors and the amount of intermediated savings factors which in turn increase the growth rate and may help countries to take off from a poverty trap taxation finances financial infrastructures and decreases the private productivity of capital growth and welfare maximising levels of financial infrastructures are computed

emerging stock markets portfolio capital flows and long term economie growth micro and macroeconomic perspectives abstract the paper examines two major components of financial liberalization stock market development and portfolio capital flows in the context of less developed countries the paper considers microeconomic and macroeconomic perspectives on their implications for long term development and economic growth it concentrates on 1 a the role of stock markets in financing corporate growth 2 b the implications of stock market volatility for resource allocation and productive efficiency and 3 c the interactions between the foreign exchange and stock markets in the context of economic shocks its policy recommendations are that ldcs should promote bank based systems influence the scale and composition of capital inflows and prevent a market for corporate control from emerging

moral hazard and optimal commodity taxation abstract this paper demonstrates that in an economy with moral hazard and more than one commodity competitive equilibrium is not constrained efficient to correct the market failure differential commodity taxation is necessary a general optimal tax formula is derived and special cases of is discussed

review on the costs and benefits of renewable energy power subsidy in china abstract nowadays renewable energy plays a vital role in the sustainable development of a society in china renewable energy power has developed rapidly since the implementation of renewable energy act through a series of specific incentive measures especially subsidy policies china s renewable energy power has made great achievements both in technology and application based on the state of the art of renewable energy power this paper comprehensively analyzed the costs and benefits of renewable energy power subsidy in china the analysis results show the cost of renewable energy power subsidy was 0 248 cny kwh between 2006 and april 2011 which was distributed among different renewable energy power types including wind power biomass power and solar pv power or categories including electricity price accessing grid projects and public independent renewable energy power system on the other hand the renewable energy power subsidy also brings benefits to different aspects of the society specifically the environmental benefit amounted to 17 88 billion cny and the benefits of guaranteeing energy security advancing technology innovation and promoting economic development were also noteworthy

a reappraisal of state owned banks we revisit the public banks debate survey the theoretical arguments and test the robustness and expand the existing empirical evidence while we find some support for the view that public banks do not allocate credit optimally we also report indicative evidence that they exert a positive influence on private bank efficiency and may contribute to reduce credit procyclicality ultimately we find that the recent criticism to public banks has generally been based on inconclusive cross country evidence more specific bank level research is still needed to substantiate a case for or against public banks in developing economies

the mechanism and policy on the electricity price of renewable energy in china abstract with the rapid development of the society energy demand is becoming more urgent so it is necessary to exploit the renewable energy because of the limited conventional energy this paper introduced the current development situation of the renewable energy analyzed the subsidy policy and discussed the problems of the electricity price mechanisms and policies in china finally we got the conclusion that government should formulate more policies to encourage private and foreign enterprises to invest renewable energy industries as well as to apply the cdm mechanism

agenda control by budget maximizers in a multi bureau setting while the present extension of the single issue model of agenda control has permitted the examination of a wide array of questions within a consistent overall framework and has generated new insights some qualifications are in order first the analysis like niskanen s and romer and rosenthal s is strictly limited to one form of agenda control take it or leave it offers made relative to some reversion level second each of the bureaus in this extension are single activity bureaus as a result certain types of agenda control that might exist when there are several dimensions to each bureau s activity such as the mix chosen for various sub activities or the spatial distribution of the bureau s output are ignored see denzau and mackay 1980 and mackay and weaver 1979a b for analyses of these types of agenda control for the case of a single bureau third as a point of reference and for expositional simplicity the analysis for the most part was executed with a single decisive voter on all issues as a result certain complexities and perhaps additional ambiguities were avoided finally in an effort to isolate and study the effects of the supply side phenomenon of agenda control a simple traditional model of the demand side of the collective choice process was employed for the simplest demand side passive supply side models this has typically proved quite adequate as models of the collective choice process have become more complex however taking on more strategic features the weaknesses of certain of the standard assumptions implicit in this demand side model become more apparent in particular the assumption that voters vote sincerely and non strategically is likely to be strained by most specifications of the dynamics of the voting process since learning on the part of voters would condition expectations and perhaps alter choice the inclusion of expectations formation into the model of voter behavior would certainly seem at least at the intuitive level to introduce an interesting additional set of constraints on agenda setters that may limit to some extent the expansionary tendencies described in this paper in short each of these qualifications should provide fertile ground for future research

industrial structure and monopoly power in the federal bureaucracy an empirical analysis industrial structure and monopoly power in the federal bureaucracy an empirical analysis i introduction in theories of public supply of services bureau monopoly power plays a key role in determining output budget and cost levels that bureaus have considerable monopoly power has generally been taken for granted 1 margolis 1975 and kaufman 1976 however question the validity of this assumption they suggest that bureaus compete not only in the broad sense of the invisible hand as proposed by mckean 1965 but also in the narrower economic sense of supplying substitutable services borcherding 1988 comments on the need to establish the strength and effectiveness of competition within the public sector in order to determine the role of competition in public sector resource allocation to date there has been no direct empirical test of the assertion that individual bureaus have monopoly power this paper presents such a test by first estimating the industrial structure of the federal sector and by next examining the relationship between measured industrial structure and bureau monopoly power this investigation is limited to estimating federal industrial structure as distinct from market structure that is the characteristics of bureau supply are examined but demand characteristics are not this approach is consistent with the focus of most existing theories that rely on the assumption of monopoly power these theories model bureaucratic managerial behavior in supply taking the legislative role to be primarily one of production monitoring 2 ii measuring industrial structure in the federal sector most bureaus are considered as independent organizations analogous to the firm in the private sector the concept of a public sector industry is also analogous to that of a private sector industry that is a collection of producing organizations that supply a similar service and then compete for funds a private sector industry is considered to be highly structured if the distribution of market shares or some other measure of size of the firms in the industry is significantly uneven 3 two commonly accepted measures of the degree of industry structure in the private sector are the concentration ratio and the herfindahl index of the two measures the concentration ratio is cited more frequently primarily because it is readily available the concentration ratio measures the combined market share of a given number usually four or eight of the largest firms in an industry because it is a partial and aggregate measure of industry structure the concentration ratio provides limited information on the firms included in the ratio the herfindahl index measures the dispersion of firm size within an industry by summing squared market shares of each firm it is generally considered a better indicator of overall industry structure and competitive level within an industry than the concentration ratio because it usually incorporates information on market shares of all firms in an industry rather than overall concentration of a few large firms the more limited use of the herfindahl index may be attributed to its extensive data requirements each of these measures is used to estimate industrial structure of the federal sector to determine public sector industry structure budget and expenditure data on federal funds general and special funds were obtained from the budget of the united states government appendix at the agency level for all bureaus active in either of two fiscal years fy 1985 and fy 1980 4 5 data on nearly 300 federal organizations have been examined for each fiscal year fy 1985 is the most recent fiscal year for which actual rather than estimated data are available fy 1980 was chosen because a five year interval should be reasonable for comparative purposes and is consistent with the practice for similar calculations made for the private sector

federalism and the growth of government revisited recent research in public economics has been testing for a relationship in federal states between the decentralization of governments and the total and individual size of government shares in gnp according to one view economic theory offers no unambiguous empirical predictions provided there is a competitive political environment at each government level the rivalry between political parties will result in an outcome that conforms approximately to the preferences of the citizens as interpreted in the conventional median voter model under this scenario it is not certain what differences might be caused by more decentralization oates 1985 to determine any difference we would have to possess considerable knowledge about the distribution of tastes and the location of the populace it has been hypothesized nevertheless that increased decentralization could result in a higher level of government expenditure quoting the economic historian john wallis oates 1985 749 suggests that since individuals have more control over public decisions at the local than at the state or national level they will wish to empower the public sector with a wider range of functions and responsibility where these activities are carried out at more localizedlevels of government

the role of warehouse receipt systems in enhanced commodity marketing and rural livelihoods in africa most african countries have since the 1980s liberalised agriculture without experiencing food crisis as feared by sceptics but the outcome of reforms has been rather disappointing and agricultural markets remain underdeveloped and inefficient one means to improve agricultural marketing which is the focus of this paper is to develop regulated warehouse receipt wr systems the system will curtail cheating on weights and measures ease access to finance at all levels in the marketing chain moderate seasonal price variability and promote instruments to mitigate price risks it will also reduce the need for the government to intervene in agricultural markets and reduce the cost of such interventions if needed the major problem in establishing wr systems in africa is disabling elements in the policy environment drawing on experience from projects implemented in africa during the last decade 1 the authors outline how this challenge can be addressed the most crucial being to build strong stakeholder support behind the initiative 2002 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

asymmetric information and excessive budgets in government bureaucracies abstract this paper develops an optimal sequential mechanism for setting the budget of a bureaucracy where the budget setter the principal has only partial information concerning the minimum required budget bureaucratic slack is constrained by the existence of managers who can replace the current manager but only at a cost due to the need to learn the job the principal s initial information and the cost of turnover of managers is related to the expected bureaucratic slack the principal gains information over the budget setting process so that a previous budget level provides important information for current budget setting

financial crisis in southeast asia dispelling illusion the minskyan way this paper extends minsky s financial instability hypothesis to the case of the open liberalised economy making it possible to put forward a specifically minskyan account of the road to the financial crisis in southeast asia 1997 1998 the analysis suggests that the threats to growth and employment emanating from the financial sector which minsky identified in the closed economy setting are much intensified in open liberalised developing economies financial liberalisation is an important key factor in this process rival explanations of the crisis are examined and rejected in favour of the extended minskyan explanation the policy implications are derived and discussed copyright 2002 oxford university press

size structure and administrative overheads an empirical analysis of english local authorities the relationship is analysed between size local government structure and administrative overheads in english local authorities size and structure effects are tested while controlling for a range of other variables including the relative prosperity of the local population and the diversity of their service needs the empirical results show that population size consistently has a linear negative effect central administrative costs are lower in larger local authorities the results also show that controlling for size administrative overheads are higher for councils in the lower tier of the existing two tier system the analysis provides support for arguments that economies of scale might be achieved by amalgamating smaller councils into larger units and by combining counties and districts into unitary authorities

credit markets and the control of capital traditional discussions of the role of capital markets have identified a number of distinct functions which they perforrn they allocate scarce capital among competing users and uses l and they provide signals to guide managers in making their investment decisions 2 in this lecture i wish to focus on a rather different function of the capital market what i shall refer to as the control of capital 3 conventional theory treats the typical firrn in an anthropomorphic manner it acts as a single rational individual doing what it is supposed to be doing maximizing stock market value that may have been well and good in those nostalgic bygone days of small firrns each run tightly by their owners who were single mindedly pursuing their lust for wealth but today a majority of production occurs in large corporations in which no shareholder owns more than a small fraction of the shares in which the separation of ownership and control that frank knight was so concerned with in his writings some sixty five years ago has become a reality those

ownership versus competition efficiency in public enterprise certainly the introduction of product market competition into potentially competitive or at least contestable markets can improve performance to take just one example morrison and whinston 1986 1986 estimate that even in the imperfectly contestable u s airline industry the annual u s welfare gains from deregulation have been around 6 billion

the political economy of benefits and costs a neoclassical approach to distributive politics this essay offers a rational political explanation for the notorious inefficiency of pork barrel projects with an optimization model of legislative behavior and legislative institutions the model emphasizes the economically arbitrary from a welfare point of view importance of the geographic incidence of benefits and costs owing to the geographic basis for political representation we explore the implications of a legislator s objective function and derive conditions under which a representative legislature will select an omnibus of projects each of which exceeds the efficient scale

integrating finance into the multi level perspective technology niche finance regime interactions and financial policy interventions abstract any major socio technical transition requires a fundamental re direction of financial capital from incumbent to new technologies and practices while the transitions literature conceptually covers financial markets the role of finance is marginalized and has scarcely been analysed empirically to address this gap here we build on the multi level perspective mlp which considers financial markets as part of the existing regime we argue that the role of finance is highly relevant for the niche regime interaction redirecting finance towards new niche technologies requires that either the niche is fit for and conforms to the financial regime s expectations or the financial regime is stretched and transformed in order to accept and finance niche technologies based on 56 interviews we identify factors that determine interactions between the financial regime and technology niches these include acceptable risk and transaction size an abundance of knowledge and heuristics in both the regime and niche and an extensive existing industry network we further analyse how state investment bank sib interventions in germany the uk and australia aimed to mobilise private finance into low carbon project development affect the interaction between the technology niche and financial regime i e whether they resulted in fitting and conforming the technological niche for the financial regime or stretching and transforming the financial regime our results point to several important effects of sib interventions with most effects fitting the niche to the regime however we also detect effects that stretch and transform the financial regime through evolutionary processes importantly some effects occur as a consequence of the primary effects based on our findings we discuss policy implications on how to accelerate transitions through policies aiming at finance as well as theoretical insights gained through our analysis

financial restraints and private investment evidence from a nonstationary panel we employ recently developed panel data methods to estimate a model of private investment under nancial restraints for 20 developing countries using annual data for 1972 2000 we show that the qualitative nature of the results varies depending on whether we take into account cross country eects when we allow for cross sectional dependence investment displays more sensitivity to world capital market conditions and exchange rate uncertainty a perhaps even more surprising result is the nding that countries that managed to suppress domestic real interest rates without generating high in ation enjoyed higher levels of private investment than those that would have been obtained under liberalised conditions

the congressional bureaucratic system a principal agent perspective with applications to the sec this paper provides the theoretical perspective and empirical support for congressional dominance of agency decisions my thesis is twofold first because much of the previous evidence on this question is not evidence at all many scholars intuition and conclusions are based on a logically flawed foundation second i have provided here and in previous work a look at a variety of different agencies and in each case have shown how the events can plausibly be interpreted as involving congress agency problems within the congressional bureaucratic system are real and substantial just as they are within corporations however as in the latter institutional forms develop within the congressional system to partially if not wholly mitigate these problems the logical perspective together with the evidence provide a strong case against the agency dominance hypothesis as typified by the early sections of niskanen 1971 and wilson 1980

present situation problems and solutions of china s biomass power generation industry abstract with the reduction of global oil reserves developing renewable energy has become an important issue for each country biomass power is an important kind of clean energy as it has abundant resource and is environmental friendly in the past few years china biomass power industry has developed rapidly accompanied with some problems this paper analyzes the current situation of china biomass power generation from several aspects such as power structure resource distribution investment strength and policy environment etc we focus on the problems existed in practical operation and analyze the outstanding problems at last this paper offers several suggestions for future development on the relevant fields such as cost strategic planning and policy

financial restraints in the south korean miracle abstract we provide novel empirical evidence on the effects of financial restraints on south korean financial development the evidence is linked to a simple model of the korean banking system that encapsulates its cartelised nature which predicts a positive association between financial development and i the degree of state control over the banking system ii mild repression of lending rates the model also predicts that in the presence of lending rate controls increases in the level of the administered deposit rate are unlikely to influence financial deepening we test the model empirically by constructing individual and summary measures of financial restraints our empirical findings are consistent with our theoretical predictions but contrast sharply with the predictions of earlier literature that postulates that interest rate ceilings and other financial restraints constitute sources of financial repression

redefining the role of the state an interview with introduction by brian snowdon professor joseph stiglitz is without question one of the world s leading economists in his extensive research he has made seminal contributions to the analysis of the economic consequences of incomplete information and uncertainty this work has greatly enhanced economists understanding of the welfare properties of markets and the sources of market failure his research has also contributed to the development of better microeconomic foundations for keynesian macroeconomic models most recently professor stiglitz has been heavily involved in controversial public policy debates relating to the east asian crisis problems of transition from communism to capitalism the limitations of the washington consensus and globalisation and development a common theme in all of these debates relates to the role of government and legitimate borders of the state in both developed and developing economies in this article interview professor stiglitz gives his views on these and several other important global issues

industrial structure of the federal sector evidence from bureau market share data this paper examines the industrial organization of the federal sector by measuring the variation of bureau market shares of appropriations the two measures employed are rank shift analysis turnover and the hymer pashigian index of market share instability which have been used to indicate the level of competitiveness within private sector industries the results of both the rank shift and market share instability analyses strongly suggest that there is considerable competition among bureaus within the federal sector these results are consistent with the hypothesis and existing evidence that bureaus engage in nonprice competitive strategies

the structure of a contract and the theory of a non exclusive resource the process of arriving at a useful concept of analysis is not only slow and painful but also may go astray and attain nothing useful someone begins with one example or observation followed by a theory which is intuitively plausible a theoretical term associated with a vague concept is coined examples of a seemingly different type emerge which call for another theory the process goes on as examples and theories continue to accumulate the different categories under the same heading of analysis serve only to confuse and each associated theory becomes ad hoc such has been the fate of the concept of externality a more useful approach i think is via contractual conditions the example chosen for illustration is marine fisheries where the fishing right is taken

savings investment and the corporation in the east asian miracle abstract the east asian countries have achieved a spectacular average rate of economic growth over the last 30 to 40 years with very substantial diversification and economic development korea for example managed to transform itself from being a largely agricultural society in 1960 to the point where it became the third country after the us and japan to export 256 k memory chips developed by its own firms it is no exaggeration to say that the post wwii development of east asia including japan is the most successful story of sustained economic growth in the history of mankind how does one account for this extraordinary economic success

biomass direct fired power generation system in china an integrated energy ghg emissions and economic evaluation for salix abstract to gain a better understanding of the options of biomass power generation in china this study presented an integrated energy environmental and economic evaluation for salix in china and a typical salix direct fired power generation system sdpgs in inner mongolia was selected for case study a tiered hybrid life cycle assessment lca model was developed to calculate the planting to wire ptw energy consumption greenhouse gas ghg emissions and economic cost and profit of the sdpgs including feedstock cultivation power plant construction and operation and on grid price with without government subsidies the results show that the ptw energy consumption and ghg emissions of salix are 0 8 mj kwh and 114 g co2 eq kwh respectively indicating an energy payback time epbt of 3 2 years the sdpgs is not economically feasible without government subsidies the ptw costs are dominated by feedstock cultivation the energy saving and ghg mitigation benefits are still robust even when the power plant runs at only 60 design capacity for future development of biomass power in china scientific planning is necessary to guarantee a sufficient feedstock supply in addition technology progress mature industrial chains and reasonable price setting policy are required to enable potential energy and environmental advantages of biomass power moving forward

can an islamic model of housing finance cooperative elevate the economic status of the underprivileged abstract a formal home loan is onerous to subprime borrowers in efficient markets this can deter home ownership for financially strapped individuals leading to a market failure this paper proposes a special form of cooperative mortgage financing practiced in oman to overcome this market failure we integrate the literature of mortgage design with that of informal savings schemes i e roscas ascras to illustrate that this mode of financing dissipates credit risk better than the

the financial crisis and bank client relationships foreign ownership transparency and portfolio selection abstract using a unique dataset that matches banks with their client firms we investigate the differences between foreign and domestic banks in a developing country in particular we are interested in examining how foreign banks solve the information asymmetries that characterize lending relationships and whether those relationships have changed since the financial crisis of 2008 foreign banks are likely to limit their lending activity to larger firms or more transparent firms because they are at an informational disadvantage relative to domestic banks we find that foreign banks focus on relationships with foreign listed and larger firms in addition their portfolio is more heavily weighted towards firms in less competitive industries and exporting firms comparing outcomes for 2006 and 2009 we find that banks are more concerned with leverage in 2009 and have reduced the number of firms in their portfolio post crisis

the role of the state in financial markets this paper reexamines the role of the state in financial markets and identifies seven major market failures that provide a potential rationale for government intervention in practice government interventions in capital markets even in industrial countries have been pervasive the paper provides a taxonomy of those interventions with respect to both the objectives they serve and the instruments they employ there is a role for the government in financial markets but the success of government interventions has been mixed it is important that interventions be well designed the paper sets out principles for government regulatory interventions and applies them to prudential regulation it then examines three other areas of intervention directed credit finanical repression and competition policy and identifies circumstances in which some amount of financial repression may actually be beneficial

government financial institutions and capital allocation efficiency in japan abstract this paper uses the industry level panel data from 1975 2005 and estimates wurgler s the elasticity of industry investment to value added for each of japan s 47 prefectures we find that wurgler s varies considerably across prefectures even though there is no regulatory restriction on inter regional flow of financial capital moreover exploiting cross prefecture variation in wurgler s we show that the share of government loans is strongly and negatively correlated with the quality of capital allocation we also find that this negative correlation is robust to controlling for local economic and financial development and more pronounced in declining industries than growing industries moreover the share of government loans is positively correlated with investment to output ratio but negatively correlated with total factor productivity growth taken as a whole the results are broadly consistent with the view that japan s government financial institutions stimulate investment in declining industries while distorting capital allocation and reducing overall productivity growth

stock markets corporate finance and economic growth an overview the research presented here focuses on four issues first it constructs more measures or criteria of stock market development than any previous study it compares liquidity concentration volatility institutional development and international integration across forty four industrial and developing countries from 1976 to 1993 besides identifying general characteristics of these measures and defining stock market development empirically these data facilitate further research into the relationship between stock market development and financial intermediaries corporate finance decisions and economic growth these measures ranked for each country can be used for inter country comparisons of the level of stock market development in addition the data provide a basis for gauging the success of capital market development projects using objective criteria second with these new data the research investigates the relationships between stock markets and financial intermediaries third the research analyzes the relationship between stock market development and long run economic growth fourth the research studies the ties between stock market development and financing choices of firms this overview puts this research in context and reviews the main results of the study section i provides a brief review of the role of stock markets in economic development and documents the evolution of debt and equity markets during the growth process section ii defines stock market development and presents summary data on the development of financial intermediaries and stock markets section iii presents evidence on the effect of stock market development on economic growth section iv summarizes the empirical results on how stock market development affects firm financing decisions section v concludes by discussing policy implications

bureaucratic agenda control imposition or bargaining niskanen s economic model of bureaucratic behavior assumes that bureaucratic agenda control allows the bureau to impose upon a passive legislature its most preferred alternative from among the set of alternatives that dominate the status quo but does a monopoly on the agenda give bureaus this degree of influence over a voting body this article reports on experiments that demonstrate that a monopoly on the agenda puts the agenda monopolist in a position to bargain with a voting body without being able to impose his or her most preferred alternative on that body this evidence supports theories of bureaucratic legislative bargaining at the expense of theories of bureaucratic imposition

peer monitoring and credit markets a major problem for institutional lenders is ensuring that borrowers exercise prudence in the use of the funds so that the likelihood of repayment is enhanced one partial solution is peer monitoring having neighbors who are in a good position to monitor the borrower be required to pay a penalty if the borrower goes bankrupt peer monitoring is largely responsible for the successful financial performance of the grameen bank of bangladesh and of similar group lending programs elsewhere but peer monitoring has a cost it transfers risk from the bank which is in a better position to bear risk to the cosigner in a simple model of peer monitoring in a competitive credit market this article demonstrates that the transfer of risk leads to an improvement in borrowers welfare

a quantitative reassessment of the finance growth nexus evidence from a multivariate var abstract the long run relationship between financial development and economic growth is examined in a multivariate vector autoregression var framework using 10 sample countries difficulties surrounding the cross country regressions and bivariate time series studies are outlined the long run financial development and output relationships are identified in a cointegrating framework through tests of over identifying restrictions we find bi directional causality between financial development and economic growth in all the sample countries conclusions that stand distinct from those in the existing empirical literature we attribute our findings to i analysis of a higher dimensional system ii a new method of identifying the long run economic relationships and iii a new approach to long run causality testing

development goal of 30 gw for china s biomass power generation will it be achieved abstract china currently is engaged in resolving many issues which involve increasing peasants income protecting environment and adjusting energy structure which are able to be solved by developing the biomass power generation industry this paper focuses on the development goal of 30 gw for china s biomass power generation summarizes the industrial situation and policy environment discusses the possibility of achieving the development goal and introduces the way to achieve the goal we draw the following conclusions 1 there are still some obstacles to be overcome such as the insufficient raw material supply the low feed in tariff and the poor ability of technical research 2 according to china s current industrial situation it is possible to achieve the development goal 3 china s policy tools is able to guarantee the industry development goal at last we offer several policy recommendations for adjusting the feed in tariff and completing the tradable green certificate system

median voters political systems and public policies an empirical test this paper tests the median voter hypothesis that variations in policies across political systems are caused by variations in median voter preferences the context of the empirical analysis is the tax policies of three groups of sub national governments in england in three time periods the results of a median voter model of tax policy variation are compared to the results of a mean voter model in different party systems and different electoral systems the evidence provides little support for the median voter hypothesis

three and a half cycles of mania panic and asymmetric crash east asia and latin america compared this paper argues that despite some significant differences the 1982 debt crisis the 1994 mexican crisis and the 1997 east asian crisis share the common characteristic that over lending and over borrowing are basically endogenous market failures of over liquid and under regulated financial markets along the lines described by kindleberger s manias panics and crashes although these crashes have tended to be asymmetric as the largest international lenders have emerged relatively intact the paper concludes with a discussion of brazil s increasing vulnerability to a sudden collapse of confidence and withdrawal of finance which indicates the probability of another impending crisis

fiscal decentralization and government size an extension this paper analyzes one method governments employ to circumvent the discipline of a competitive system of fiscal federalism intergovernmental collusion in the form of intergovernmental grants grants it is argued serve to encourage the expansion of the public sector by concentrating taxing powers in the hands of the central government and by weakening the fiscal discipline imposed on governments forced to self finance their expenditures the results reported suggest that intergovernmental grants do encourage growth in the public sector the results offer further support for the use of monopoly government assumptions in public sector modeling

understanding cost reduction of china s biomass direct combustion power generation a study based on learning curve model abstract during the critical transition towards cleaner production cp the developing and transition countries should pay extra attention to displace traditional biomass utilization with cp concepts such as biomass direct combustion power bio dcp china has witnessed impressive growth in its bio dcp sector from 2006 to 2014 the further industrial expansion and policy making of bio dcp in china and other countries in transition call for a deeper understanding of cost reduction mechanisms in this study the learning curve models i e electricity production cost as a function of multiple factors including cumulative installed capacity operation maintenance costs feed in tariff and cogeneration were developed to i empirically estimate the learning rates of china s bio dcp and ii investigate the impacts of past technological developments and policies on the cost development main findings include i the overall learning rate of china s bio dcp is 4 54 over the period 2006 2014 ii the raised feed in tariff in 2010 shows a positive effect on the learning of bio dcp iii the circulating fluidized bed projects show a higher learning rate compared to that of the grate boiler projects based on the above results suggestions regarding the bio dcp s future development are offered including discriminative subsidies biomass waste supply chains cogeneration and multi industry parks

financial market fragmentation and reforms in ghana malawi nigeria and tanzania this article reports the findings from surveys of formal and informal institutions and their clients in ghana malawi nigeria and tanzania it investigates the hypothesis that reforming financially repressive policies would not be sufficient to overcome fragmentation of financial markets because of structural and institutional barriers to interactions across different market segments the four countries have substantially fragmented financial markets with weak linkages between formal and informal segments and interest rate differentials that cannot be adequately explained by differences in costs and risks nevertheless the relatively low transaction costs and loan losses of informal institutions indicate that they provide a reasonably efficient solution to information transaction cost and enforcement problems that exclude their clients from access to formal banking services the findings imply that financial liberalization and bank restructuring in the african context should be accompanied by complementary measures to address institutional and structural problems such as contract enforcement and information availability and to improve the integration of informal and formal financial markets

financial liberalization financial sector development and growth evidence from malaysia abstract the objective of this paper is to examine whether financial development leads to economic growth or vice versa in the small open economy of malaysia using time series data from 1960 to 2001 we conduct cointegration and causality tests to assess the finance growth link by taking the real interest rate and financial repression into account the empirical evidence suggests that financial liberalization through removing the repressionist policies has a favorable effect in stimulating financial sector development financial depth and economic development are positively related but contrary to the conventional findings our results support robinson s view that output growth leads to higher financial depth in the long run

new perspectives on east asian development conventional explanations of rapid growth in east asia have focused on the efficient allocation of resources resulting from market led outward oriented strategies this study challenges that approach east asian success has centred around the accumulation dynamic both because of its direct importance to the growth process and also because of its close and interdependent linkages with exports on this basis the study considers the institutions and policies which were used to manage economic rents in support of rapid growth and to ensure a more strategic and orderly integration into the world economy the study also examines the contribution of regional trade and investment flows to east asian industrialisation the potential for replicating similar strategies is considered

productivity and financial sector policies evidence from south east asia this paper uses primary data collected from the central bank reports to examine the influence of financial sector policies on the average productivity of capital in five south east asian economies the data include measures of repressionist policies encompassing interest rate controls directed credit programmes and reserve and liquidity requirements we use time series techniques to examine whether these policies have a statistically significant influence on the average productivity of capital conditioning on variables suggested by economic theory these policies are found to have a significant negative effect on productivity in most cases with the important exception of south korea for which we find significant positive effects

international capital flows identifying the gender dimension abstract this paper explores the main issues involved in examining the gender impact of international capital flows to developing countries it argues that at the macroeconomic level women lose more than men from slow and or unstable economic growth financial crises and meltdowns and even more so the longer and deeper the economic downturn because without a social security system the family and women have many additional burdens women should formulate an agenda of their own with respect to international monetary reform and some proposals are outlined in this respect including those involving capital controls

financial sector reforms in developing countries the indian experience this study is based on the premise that the success failure of financial sector reforms depends heavily on country specific factors and makes an attempt to examine these factors in the indian context the financial sector reforms analysed in this paper include the deregulation of interest rates increasing competition and foreign ownership and the introduction of financial supervision we argue that an economic rationale for a gradualist approach to financial reform is that it is stability enhancing furthermore we suggest that india s complex political economy has resulted in a gradual approach to reform and this approach has been successful along the dimension of banking stability