measuring and improving the performance of customs valuation controls an illustration with gabon modern customs administrations aim to both facilitate legal trade and combat fraud to meet this dual objective many customs administrations in developing countries must give risk management a highly prominent role in this context of modernisation this paper first provides stylised facts on the performance of the customs controls carried out at the gabon border then we compare gabon s granular import customs data with international trade statistics based on this comparison we identify undetected fraud and present a methodology to target ex post audits finally we define indicators to monitor the performance of customs valuation controls

understanding interorganizational cooperation public private collaboration in regulating financial market innovation this paper examines how a collaborative effort between the private and public sectors called the derivatives policy group dpg helped shape current regulation of financial innovation in 1994 and 1995 this group of six large financial firms developed procedures for risk management internal controls and reporting for largely unregulated areas of finance in cooperation with the united states securities and exchange commission and commodity futures trading commission the process succeeded despite strong competition among the firms themselves and incentives for both the public and private sectors to resort to adversarial lobbying and legal challenges the derivatives policy group was a path setting event in the development of flexible regulation of financial innovation that is now the norm for related policy making the case is important in and of itself the financial markets are a major concern of national and international economic policy but here we treat it as an instance of a larger class of problems organizational science constantly encounters settings that involve numerous participants who compete or have histories of conflicts who are interdependent and collectively would gain and even individually gain long term by cooperating rather than competing on an issue who fall under different governance systems and who try as a group to design rules and principles governing their behavior four factors appear repeatedly in the research on the success or failure of such arrangements these are 1 the initial dispositions toward cooperation 2 the extant issues and incentives 3 leadership and 4 the number and variety of organizations involved this paper focuses on how these factors shaped the development and consequences of the derivatives policy group and the general implications of this process for interorganizational cooperation

how do diffusion entrepreneurs spread policies insights from performance based financing in sub saharan africa abstract there has been growing interest in the diffusion of policy innovations across countries research on policy diffusion is characterised by coherent explanatory models that assess the importance of diffusion mechanisms this study takes a different perspective on diffusion studies and advances public policy literature by introducing the concept of diffusion entrepreneurs these entrepreneurs represent groups of individuals networks and organisations promoting a certain policy innovation with a view to gain influence first drawing from the diffusion literature and linking it to studies investigating policy diffusion in polycentric contexts we introduce analytical categories to study diffusion entrepreneurs key features and actions second to illustrate the analytical value of the concept we conduct an in depth analysis of the literature on the diffusion entrepreneurs of health performance based financing pbf in sub saharan africa we show how and why this recently diffused policy innovation provides a unique case for demonstrating our conceptual notion in pbf a nexus of strongly dedicated diffusion entrepreneurs have strived to induce policy diffusion specifically we explore how the features of pbf diffusion entrepreneurs and their actions affect the outcomes of diffusion processes lastly we reflect on the relevance of our conceptual propositions and offer practical insights to guide future investigations

structural factors in the economic reforms of china eastern europe and the former soviet union reform in china and russia jeffrey sachs and wing thye woo china s experience does not show that gradual reform is superior to the shock therapy undertaken in eastern europe and the former soviet union eefsu differing performance primarily reflects different economic structures prior to reform china was a peasant agricultural society eefsu was urban and overindustrialized in both jobs in state enterprises were so heavily subsidized that workers refused to move to new industries elsewhere even when productivity in the latter was much higher in eefsu the large state sector impeded structural adjustment curtailing subsidies would have produced many losers who used their power to resist this outcome failure to curtail subsidies then cut off the potential supply of labour and other factors to new emerging firms china s state enterprises have not performed as well as the rest of the chinese economy and do not explain its success rapid growth was possible because the large agricultural sector contained vast surplus labour and did not enjoy subsidies and soft budget constraints once constraints on migration across regions and jobs were removed this labour was available to fuel expansion in new industries unlike the distributional conflict in eefsu in china reallocation of labour allowed all groups to gain in both partial liberalization also unleashed macroeconomic pressures manageable in china because of rapid growth and adequate monetary policy but explosive in much of eefsu because of deeper structural problems and gross monetary mismanagement

the economy wide impacts and risks of malawi s farm input subsidy program we estimate the impact of malawi farm input subsidy programme using an economywide approach we find potentially substantial net benefits with indirect benefits accounting for about two fifths of total benefits due to these indirect benefits the cut off

world bank directives domestic interests and the politics of human capital investment in latin america recent studies underscore the importance of international organizations in transmitting norms ideas and values to developing countries but has this diffusion influenced government policy in less developed countries during the past two decades the world bank has emphasized the need for third world governments to increase the stock of human capital by investing in education and health specifically it has encouraged developing countries to shift an increasing share of their resources toward primary education the authors examine 13 latin american countries between 1980 and 1992 to establish the relationship between world bank project lending and government investment in human capital they combine time series cross sectional analysis with field research to evaluate the world bank s influence on government spending on education and health although the world bank may be successful in convincing developing country technocrats to invest in people this research suggests that it is less successful in co

do regimes matter epistemic communities and mediterranean pollution control international regimes have received increasing attention in the literature on international relations however little attention has been systematically paid to how compliance with them has been achieved an analysis of the mediterranean action plan a coordinated effort to protect the mediterranean sea from pollution shows that this regime actually served to empower a group of experts members of an epistemic community who were then able to redirect their governments toward the pursuit of new objectives acting in an effective transnational coalition these new actors contributed to the development of convergent state policies in compliance with the regime and were also effective in promoting stronger and broader rules for pollution control this suggests that in addition to providing a form of order in an anarchic international political system regimes may also contribute to governmental learning and influence patterns of behavior by empowering new groups who are able to direct their governments toward new ends

does trade liberalization lead to environmental burden shifting in the global economy abstract does trade liberalization lead to the outsourcing of pollution from industrialized countries to developing countries according to the pollution haven hypothesis international trade is a key channel through which richer countries can geographically dissociate consumption from production of goods we examine whether and how trade liberalization via preferential trade agreements ptas facilitates the shifting of consumption based environmental burdens from developed countries via imports to poorer countries via exports based on panel data analysis of 183 countries from 1987 to 2013 we find partial evidence for trade induced environmental burden shifting while we observe an increase in footprint exports from low income countries when these countries liberalize trade this is not matched by an increase in footprint imports of high income countries our results also show that environmental clauses in ptas and participation in international environmental agreements do not influence the relationship between trade liberalization and ecological footprint movements however domestic institutions have a significant effect on the trade induced distribution of environmental burdens these findings suggest that ptas as a policy tool for trade liberalization are per se unlikely to induce exploitation of low income countries natural capital by wealthier nations however they suggest that political incentives inherent to democratic institutions encourage environmental burden shifting

tax policy in an era of internationalization explaining the spread of neoliberalism i offer an explanation for the widespread diffusion of neoliberal tax policies in the developed democracies after accounting for the policy influences of commonly experienced domestic and international forces i consider several plausible paths of diffusion of neoliberal tax structure my central argument is that the highly visible 1980s market conforming tax reform in the united states should be especially important in shaping subsequent tax policies in other polities there are substantial reasons to believe however that domestic political and institutional forces will shape policymaker assessment of the benefits and costs of neoliberal reforms the strength of right parties and the degree to which the median voter has moved right should condition adoption of neoliberal tax policy the institutions of national and sector coordinated capitalism should also slow the enactment of neoliberal tax reforms i assess these arguments with empirical models of 1981 98 tax rates on capital in sixteen nations i find that changes in u s tax policy influence subsequent reforms in other polities in the long term all nations move toward the u s neoliberal tax structure analysis also shows however that the short term responsiveness to u s tax reforms is notably greater where uncoordinated market institutions are dominant theory and extensive qualitative and quantitative evidence indicate that pressures to compete for mobile assets as balanced against the economic and political costs of adoption anchor the process of diffusion of neoliberal tax policy there is little evidence for the view that systematic policy learning or social emulation drove tax policy diffusion earlier versions of this article were presented at the center for european studies and weatherhead center for international affairs harvard university center for international studies ucla and yale university as well as the 2002 annual meetings of the american political science association an earlier version was published as minda de gunzburg center for european studies harvard university working paper 120 i thank alex hicks rob franzese torben iversen andy martin cathie jo martin participants in the yale ucla and harvard conferences especially geoffrey garrett helen milner dennis quinn and beth simmons and two anonymous referees and the editors of international organization for helpful comments i also gratefully acknowledge the contribution of sven steinmo that comes by way of our past collaborative work on tax policy

ideological guerrillas and the quest for technological autonomy brazil s domestic computer industry brazil s domestic computer industry developed during the past decade has excluded multinational giants such as ibm from brazil s growing micro and minicomputer markets changes in computer technology and in markets as well as in domestic economic and political conditions helped facilitate brazil s progress toward technological independence but primary support for the project came from technocratic and military elites who were determined for ideological reasons to reduce brazil s computer dependency and to challenge the dominance of multinationals ideologically motivated technocrats used their positions in state bureaucracies to convince policy makers of the industry s viability and to set up institutions that would defend the autonomy model and turn a sectoral policy into a national policy brazil still depends on foreign software and microelectronics however bargaining theory correctly asserts that even dependency in sophisticated technological sectors can be partially overcome bargaining theories must not overlook the importance of cognitive and institutional processes which can make the difference between taking action to reduce dependency or doing nothing

the impact of ideas on trade policy the origins of u s agricultural and manufacturing policies since the close of world war ii the united states has supported contradictory trade policies in manufacturing the united states has fostered a liberal trade regime spurning government involvement in market transactions in agriculture it has sanctioned policies of import restrictions export subsidies and import fees this variation is rooted in decisions that were made in the 1930s and institutionalized in the 1940s in the wake of the great depression policymakers concluded that state intervention helped agriculture and hurt industry this article argues that the choice of government policy and its appropriateness to the economic problems faced by each sector reflect the accepted knowledge at the time neither liberalization nor subsidization was inevitable both were economically viable options however central decision makers made choices that were often based on inaccurate beliefs about the utility of different policy options

the success of a policy model irrigation management transfer in mexico abstract the mexican policy of irrigation management transfer has been widely propagated as a success and has become a model for other countries seeking to improve the performance of their irrigation systems while also cutting public expenditures this article analyses the process of policy making that has generated the policy model and follows the practices means and events through which it has achieved increasing transnational circulation popularity and support the main argument of this article is that the success of a policy model is only a success within the cultural and ideological understandings of a policy network and given the means practices and events that generate and disseminate it this particular case further suggests that success in policy making rather than being based on straightforward evidence of improved management performance is often part of a cultural performance

a participatory approach to sustainable energy strategy development in a carbon intensive jurisdiction the case of nova scotia the need for governments to reduce the exposure of energy consumers to future increases in fossil fuel prices places urgent pressure on policy makers to deliver fundamental transformations in energy strategies particularly in jurisdictions with high dependency on fossil fuel sources dorian et al 2006 this transformation is unlikely without a high level of stakeholder engagement in the policy development process this paper describes two policy development processes recently undertaken in nova scotia in which the inclusion of stakeholder views was central to the approach the first delivered a new institutional framework for electricity energy efficiency involving the inception of an independent performance based administrator the second required the delivery of a strategy to significantly increase renewable energy generation in the province it involved recommendations for changes in institutional arrangements financial incentives and technological options this process was followed by new commitments to renewable energy developments new infrastructure for the importation of hydro electricity and the announcement of fits for ocean energy in both cases recommendations were made by an independent academic institution and the government responded directly to a majority of recommendations the paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned and the implications for future energy policy making in carbon intensive jurisdictions

explaining government choices for promoting renewable energy abstract many advanced industrialized countries have in recent years experienced a significant expansion of electricity production from renewables yet we know quite little about the dynamics of the underlying policychoices in this area using new data on adoptions and changes in feed in tariff and green certificate schemes in 26 advanced industrialized countries over 20 years we examine both domestic driving forces as well as international determinants the findings suggest that three factors play a particularly important role in pushing countries towards market based support systems characteristics of the existing energy supply system a federalist structure of the political system and eu membership particularly noteworthy is the finding that higher shares of fossil and nuclear energy in the national energy supply as well as higher co 2 intensity of the economy do not as we had expected stand in the way of policies for supporting renewables in electricity production to the contrary they increase the likelihood of a country adopting such policies we also find however that higher economic growth and higher growth in solar and wind energy capacity tend to reduce the political appetite for reforms of existing schemes

the new economics of organization over the last ten years or so an important new approach to the study of organizations has emerged within economics it is perhaps best characterized by three elements a contractual perspective on organizational relationships a theoretical focus on hierarchical control and formal analysis via principal agent models this paper provides political scientists with an overview of the new economics of organization and explores its implications for the study of public bureaucracy so far positive political theory has not contributed much to our understanding of public bureaucracy in part this is due to the unsympathetic treatment that rational modeling and most other modes of quantitative analysis have long received from students of public administration the other side of the coin however is that positive theorists have not made much of an effort to develop theories of bureaucracy their concerns have centered around two basic mechanisms of social choice voting and markets and they have devoted little systematic attention to a third mechanism that is clearly important for understanding how societies and other aggregates make collective decisions this third and relatively unexplored mechanism is hierarchy movement toward a positive theory of hierarchies would fill a serious gap in the social choice literature while at the same time making a theoretical contribution that strikes to the essence of public bureaucracy indeed of all organizations in fact significant steps toward a positive theory of hierarchies have very recently been taken but by economists not political scientists in small numbers of course economists made contributions to the study of public bureaucracy some time ago with the pioneering works of downs 1967 tullock 1965 and niskanen 1971 but this new wave of theoretical work is different it is already a large complex body of literature that is the focus of innovation and excitement among a growing number of economists and it reflects an unusual degree of theoretical coherence and cumulative effort work in this tradition tends to receive orientation from a distinctive economic approach to the analysis of organizations an approach perhaps best characterized by three elements a contractual perspective on organizational relationships a focus on hierarchical control and formal analysis via principal agent models this approach has emerged from recent attempts to move beyond the neoclassical theory of the firm which assumes away all organizational considerations to a theory of economic organizations that can explain why firms corporations and other enterprises behave as they do propo

revenue erosion through exemption and evasion in cameroon 1993 abstract the administration of tax statutes materially determines their economic effects a survey of cameroonian businesses a country seemingly typical of its economic level demonstrates widespread erosion of the tax bases paid by businesses through exemptions and evasion businesses seem willing to provide information on these potentially confidential activities the survey provides information on the number of businesses evading taxes or having exemptions on the characteristics of these businesses relative to others on whether businesses maintain information of use to the tax administration on the contacts between the administration and businesses affecting evasion and on penalties imposed by the administration

new development approaches and the adaptability of international agencies the case of the world bank certain realist views of the international economic regime construe international financial agencies as straightforward reflections of the power and interests of nation states however the world bank s responsiveness to a wide range of demands for new development priorities and approaches also depends on the compliance of its huge staff the staff s discretion in shaping implementing discrediting or resisting these approaches requires an organizational theoretic analysis of the sources of acceptance of or resistance to particular initiatives role set theory accounts for many of the motivational sources of resistance the capabilities to resist new initiatives through bureaucratic politics can be understood through march and simon s emphasis on the importance of absorbing uncertainty on the basis of these theories and findings on attitudes expressed by bank staff strategies can be developed to enhance the bank s responsiveness to such initiatives as greater emphasis on the alleviation of poverty theory and findings also provide a basis for speculating on the characteristics required of an international agency to warrant treating it as an autonomous variable in the international system

institutions in comparative policy research the article explores the intersections between the different perspectives of institutional and policy research and discusses the characteristic purposes and conditions of theory oriented policy research where the usefulness of statistical analyses is generally constrained by the complexity and contingency of causal influences although comparative case studies are better able to deal with these conditions their capacity to empirically identify the causal effect of differing institutional conditions on policy outcomes depends on a restrictive case selection that would need to hold constant the influence of two other sets of contingent factors the policy challenges actually faced and the preferences and perceptions of the actors involved when this is not possible empirical policy research may usefully resort to a set of institutionalist working hypotheses that are derived from the narrowly specified theoretical assumptions of rational choice institutionalism although these hypotheses will often be wron

diffusion across international organizations connectivity and convergence while extensive research shows that policies and institutions spread across states through processes of diffusion we know little about diffusion among international organizations ios this artic

tax rates and tax evasion evidence from missing imports in china tax evasion by its very nature is difficult to observe we quantify the effects of tax rates on tax evasion by examining the relationship in china between the tariff schedule and the evasion gap which we define as the difference between hong kong s reported exports to china at the product level and china s reported imports from hong kong our results imply that a one percentage point increase in the tax rate is associated with a 3 percent increase in evasion furthermore the evasion gap is negatively correlated with tax rates on closely related products suggesting that evasion takes place partly through misclassification of imports from higher taxed categories to lower taxed ones in addition to underreporting the value of imports

domestic and international influences on green taxation economists have made a strong case for the relative efficiency of market based mechanisms for environmental regulation such as cap and trade and green taxes yet the spread of these forms has been limited and traditional command and control regulation still predominates the authors explain geographical and temporal variation in green tax burdens by considering their domestic and international determinants modeling international influences using spatial lags hypotheses are tested using panel data on organisation for economic co operation and development member states from 1995 to 2004 at the domestic level the authors show that green tax burdens are influenced by the left right and environmental positions of legislative medians and the power of the energy producing sector among other factors the authors also show that ideas about policy diffuse through international networks generated by trade and environmental intergovernmental organizations but they do not find compelling evidence for intern

barriers to political analysis in aid bureaucracies from principle to practice in dfid and the world bank summary politics has become a central concern in development discourse and yet the use of political analysis as a means for greater aid effectiveness remains limited and contested within development agencies this article uses qualitative data from two governance leaders the united kingdom department for international development and the world bank to analyze the administrative hurdles facing the institutionalization of political analysis in aid bureaucracies we find that programing management and training practices across headquarters and country offices remain largely untouched by a political analysis agenda which suffers from its identification with a small cross national network of governance professionals

the globalization of liberalization policy diffusion in the international political economy one of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world these policies have affected the lives of millions of people yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially we hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion we think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting we develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account the capital account and the exchange rate regime our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient the evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country s sociocultural peers we interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments search for appropriate models for economic policy

the politics of common knowledge ideas and institutional change in wage bargaining domestic economic institutions change through processes of conflict and bargaining why do the strongest groups in such conflicts ever change their minds about the acceptability of institutional arrangements they once opposed drawing on the cases of ireland in 1986 87 and italy in 1989 93 this article demonstrates how the process of common knowledge creation between employers and unions changed the course of negotiations over national wage bargaining institutions common knowledge creation happens when existing institutions are in crisis the institutional experimentation that follows such crises characterized by deep uncertainty places a premium on persuasive argument the ideas most likely to serve as the basis for newly common knowledge will have analytical and distributive appeal to both unions and employers and they must be ratified in public agreements which i call common knowledge events common knowledge events establish new social facts which can change the payoffs associated with different institutional outcomes this can lead even powerful actors to accept institutions they had previously opposed the author thanks marius busemeyer mary louise culpepper keith darden orfeo fioretos archon fung peter hall andrew martin cathie jo martin victoria murillo kathleen thelen and gunnar trumbull along with three anonymous reviewers and the editors of io for comments and conversations that improved this article ben ansell and vikram siddarth provided valuable research assistance financial support from the john f kennedy school of government and the weatherhead center for international affairs at harvard university is gratefully acknowledged any remaining errors are my own

domestic institutions and international regulatory cooperation comparative responses to the convention on biological diversity international regimes develop in three general ways through coercion convergence harmony or mutual state choice lasting coercive cooperation is rare 1 harmony is of limited interest 2 in the majority of cases and those of the greatest theoretical and practical significance regimes arise through explicit state choices to cooperate this article explores state choice toward international regulatory regimes for environmental protection regulatory regimes are frequently aimed at diffuse private actors and behaviors international regime rules are commonly transformed into binding domestic rules or standards regulatory cooperation and environmental cooperation in particular is marked by the degree to which this process of implementation relies upon and is shaped by existing domestic institutions and political structures because regulatory regimes at the international level are nearly always administrated through regulatory regimes at the domestic level the latter in conjunction with the politics new regulation end page 482 engenders are central to understanding state choice while many analyses have examined the role of domestic politics in international cooperation i focus on domestic institutions this article shows how institutions in conjunction with the interests of key societal actors and the political incentives faced by governments help to determine the expected political economic and legal impact of international commitments given that states are collectively the architects of international institutions and these anticipated effects thus partly endogenous the domestic regulatory structures of powerful states can also be critical influences on the scope structure and terms of international institutions to develop these claims i examine an important recent case of international environmental cooperation the protection of global biological diversity biodiversity and analyze the divergent responses of two leading states to the core agreement of the new regime while the united kingdom signed and ratified the convention on biological diversity cbd 3 negotiated as one of the keystones of the 1992 united nations conference on environment and development unced the united states refused to do so both states were active participants in the negotiations and shared a host of similarities the likelihood both of harm from biodiversity loss and of gain from biodiversity protection positions as economic powers intensity of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries antiregulatory leadership and positions on critical issues like intellectual property protection two theoretical perspectives that examine areas of potential difference are used to explore this divergence in choice toward the cbd building on the seemingly central role played by science and scientists in the formation of environmental regimes peter haas and others have developed a prominent knowledge based account of state behavior in which epistemic influence built on positive and normative understandings shared by an elite community of experts explains much of the observed intergovernmental coordination in environmental affairs 4 an alternative perspective that i term regulatory politics proposes that variations in core domestic institutions critically shape the anticipated impact of regime rules and hence the domestic politics of international cooperation

reform strategies in transitional economies lessons from asia abstract to date with the possible exception of mongolia liberalization efforts have generally been more successful in the transitional economies of asia teas than in eastern europe and the former soviet union this paper argues that both initial conditions and policies were important in explaining the difference in economic performance the teas except mongolia placed microeconomic reforms ahead of macroeconomic ones similarly there were differences in the approaches taken in areas such as enterprise reform price deregulation and financial sector reform the teas need however to supplement their reform program with fiscal monetary and external sector reforms on an urgent basis without such actions the successes acheived so far could be at stake some general lessons for transitional economies are also derived

estimating border tax evasion in mozambique abstract the relationship between border tax rates and evasion is examined for mozambique using the methodology developed by fisman and wei 2004 we find that high tax rates are associated with high levels of under reporting of import values and that tax rates have a strong and positive effect on tax evasion results also strongly confirm the presence of fraudulent classification of merchandise into lower taxed product categories finally analysis of the revenue implications of lower trade taxes finds that the revenue curve is quite flat but remains upward sloping with respect to the tax rate when only evasion is considered

introduction epistemic communities and international policy coordination the growing technical uncertainties and complexities of problems of global concern have made international policy coordination not only increasingly necessary but also increasingly difficult if decision makers are unfamiliar with the technical aspects of a specific problem how do they define state interests and develop viable solutions what factors shape their behavior under conditions of uncertainty what are the origins of international institutions and how can we best study the processes through which international policy coordination and order emerge while a variety of analytic approaches have been used to address the problems of international cooperation the approaches have yielded only fragmentary insights at its core the study of policy coordination among states involves arguments about determinism versus free will and about the ways in which the international system is maintained and transformed among the overlapping topics of debate are whether national behavior is determined or broadly conditioned by system level factors unit level factors or some complex interplay between the two whether state policymakers can identify national interests and behave independently of pressures from the social groups they nominally represent and whether states respond consistently to opportunities to create defend or expand their own wealth and power to enhance collective material benefits or to promote nonmaterial values a related question of

competing for capital the diffusion of bilateral investment treaties 1960 2000 over the past forty five years bilateral investment treaties bits have become the most important international legal mechanism for the encouragement and governance of foreign direct investment the proliferation of bits during the past two decades in particular has been phenomenal these intergovernmental treaties typically grant extensive rights to foreign investors including protection of contractual rights and the right to international arbitration in the event of an investment dispute how can we explain the widespread adoption of bits we argue that the spread of bits is driven by international competition among potential host countries typically developing countries for foreign direct investment we propose a set of hypotheses that derive from such an explanation and develop a set of empirical tests that rely on network measures of economic competition as well as more indirect evidence of competitive pressures on the host to sign bits the evidence suggests that potential hosts are more likely to sign bits when their competitors have done so we find some evidence that coercion and learning play a role but less support for cultural explanations based on emulation our main finding is that the diffusion of bits is associated with competitive economic pressures among developing countries to capture a share of foreign investment we are agnostic at this point about the benefits of this competition for development for useful comments on earlier drafts of this article we thank bill bernhard bear braumoeller frank dobbin robert franzese jeffry frieden geoffrey garrett tom ginsburg jude hays lisa martin bob pahre mark ramsayer steven ratner susan rose ackerman and john sides for research assistance we thank elizabeth burden raechel groom and alexander noonan

the theoretical and policy implications of knowledge codification the purpose of the following contribution is to present the main consequences in terms of policy of firms and governments that emerged from the theoretical and empirical work achieved under the tipik project in a first part the introduction is devoted to a summing up of the main theoretical dimensions used in tipik that led in particular to a special issue of industrial and corporate change june 2000 then the discussion envisages the main consequences of the theoretical debate in terms of policy issues and addresses the new perspectives of a knowledge oriented policy of firms and governments finally we expose a selected series of policy implications that are derived from the empirical studies presented in this special issue

environmental policy convergence the impact of international harmonization transnational communication and regulatory competition in recent years there is growing interest in the study of cross national policy convergence yet we still have a limited understanding of the phenomenon do we observe convergence of policies at all under which conditions can we expect that domestic policies converge or rather develop further apart in this article we address this research deficit from a theoretical perspective we concentrate on the explanatory power of three factors namely international harmonization transnational communication and regulatory competition in empirical terms we analyze if and to what extent we can observe convergence of environmental policies across twenty four industrialized countries between 1970 and 2000 we find an impressive degree of environmental policy convergence between the countries under investigation this development is mainly caused by international harmonization and to a considerable degree also by transnational communication whereas regulatory competition does not seem to play a role

institutional conditions and innovation systems on the impact of regional policy on firms in different sectors moodysson j and zukauskaite e institutional conditions and innovation systems on the impact of regional policy on firms in different sectors regional studies this paper deals with institutional conditions in regional innovation systems how institutions affect the organization of innovation activities among firms and in what ways regional policy initiatives can be supportive the analysis draws on data on innovation networks activities and regional policies targeting the life science media and food industries in scania sweden the study takes account of the ways in which regional policies can impact individuals and organizations action in relation to each other by being internalized it is argued that such ability is decisive for the success or failure of the policy initiative

how do mineral states learn path dependence networks and policy change in the development of economic institutions summary based on case study methods i draw lessons from the political economy of macroeconomic management in chile and peru to explain how mineral states learn to think long term and eventually escape the resource curse i give an institutionalist account of the rise of countercyclical funds showing how the long term development of elite networks qualifies the contemporary making of curse escapes policy networks compose one central avenue of institutional development for both the reproduction of path dependence and the making of institutional change the exposition challenges political economy of development frameworks which over emphasize structural initial conditions and assume steady rent seeking behavior of state agents

really a front runner really a straggler of environmental leaders and laggards in the european union and beyond a quantitative policy perspective abstract as it has long been debated who is a front runner and who is a laggard state in terms of environmental protection it is rather surprising that the topic has received rather scant attention as far as quantitative large n research endeavours are concerned of course there is a broad literature on the topic however existing studies have shortcomings the criteria on which the assessments rely are often neither equivalent cross nationally nor are they communicated clearly enough i e not transparent although ambitious efforts have been invested to rank countries in terms of their environmental performance little systematic research exists that clearly determines leaders and laggards in terms of their policies policy performance and states ranking accordingly to the best of our knowledge no empirical study has so far conducted a comprehensive and quantitative leader laggard assessment policy analysis against this backdrop we aim to provide such a paper we especially strive to test the validity of common knowledge classifications or rankings derived from assessments in the literature we demonstrate that while some known frontrunner states are indeed leaders if assessed from a broader policy data perspective other countries commonly assigned a leader role find themselves in a lower position instead in addition some nations commonly excluded from the frontrunners are located unexpectedly high in the rankings even leader laggard reversals occur if our results would be compared to existing classifications most importantly the analyses show a considerable temporal dynamic while often claimed or assumed this has not been proven as clearly until now

tariff rates tariff revenue and tariff reform some new facts this article compares the statutory and valorem tariff rates official rates with the ratio of tariff revenues to import values collected rates for jamaica kenya and pakistan it identifies four general features of the tariff codes considers whether these features apply to all developing countries and discusses four implications of these features for tariff reform first the collected rate for any given item in the tariff code is only weakly related to the official rate for the item second the variation of collected rates on average increase much less than the official rates fourth the relation between official rates and collected rates is nonlinear because the slope is lower at higher levels of the official rate

global networks and domestic policy convergence a network explanation of policy changes national economies are embedded in complex networks such as trade capital flows and intergovernmental organizations igo s these globalization forces impose differential impacts on national economies depending on a country s network positions this article addresses the policy convergence divergence debate by focusing on how networks at the international level affect domestic fiscal monetary and regulatory policies the author presents two hypotheses first similarity in network positions induces convergence in domestic economic policies as a result of peer competitive pressure second proximity in network positions facilitates policy learning and emulation which result in policy convergence the empirical analysis applies a latent space model for relational dyadic data and indicates that position similarity in the network of exports induces convergence in fiscal and regulatory policies position similarity in the network of transnational portfolio investments induces convergence in fiscal policies and position proximity in igo networks is consistently associated with policy convergence in fiscal monetary and regulatory policies

international integration and national corruption we argue that greater degrees of international integration lead to lower levels of corruption which we define as the misuse of public office for private gain we theorize that international factors affect a country s level of corruption through two principal channels one acts through economic incentives altering for various actors the costs and benefits of engaging in corrupt acts the second mode is norma tive prevailing norms in international society delegitimate and stigmatize corrup tion countries that are more integrated into international society are more exposed to economic and normative pressures against corruption we therefore test the fol lowing hypothesis the more a country is tied into international networks of ex change communication and organization the lower its level of corruption is likely to be the analysis of data from approximately 150 countries strongly confirms our expectation

is there an environmental kuznets curve for sulfur abstract most existing estimates of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for sulfur which use samples of mainly high income countries indicate a maximum emissions turning point at middle to lower high income levels of gdp per capita we use a larger and more globally representative sample than previous sulfur ekc studies we find that sulfur emissions per capita are a monotonic function of income per capita when we use a global sample and an inverted u shape function of income when we use a sample of high income countries a model estimated in first differences results in a monotonic ekc when estimated with both high income and global samples reductions in emissions are time related rather than income related

ideas institutions and american trade policy nowhere is america s hegemonic decline more evident than in changing trade patterns the united states trade balance a measure of the international demand for american goods is suffering historic deficits lowered demand for american goods has led to the under utilization of both labor and capital in a growing number of traditionally competitive american industries conversely americans taste for foreign goods has never been so great japanese cars european steel third world textiles to name a few are as well produced as their american counterparts and arrive on the u s market at a lower cost

the international diffusion of public sector downsizing network emulation and theory driven learning we examine change in the size of the public sector between 1980 and 1997 across twenty six organization for economic cooperation and development oecd member nations with particular attention to diffusion dynamics general method of moments gmm analyses demonstrate imitation of shifts in government employment within the united states and mutual influence among nations that are geographically proximate and that trade extensively disaggregated analyses show that downsizing is contagious while upsizing is not proximate downsizers but not upsizers are imitated and states act on evidence that downsizing is economically beneficial while ignoring evidence that it is harmful we argue that these asymme tries in emulation and learning are a product of the dominance of neoliberal and managerialist discourses that legitimate and theorize shrinking the public sector the twentieth century as a whole and particularly the three decades after world war ii witnessed steady growth in government size and responsibility states devel oped extensive social safety nets actively managed aggregate demand and regu lated a widening swath of economic and social life this trajectory of expansion was linked to powerful forces of economic development and demographic change and anchored in a broad political consensus 1 the 1980s and 1990s saw a sea change in the rate of public sector growth brit ish prime minister margaret thatcher and u s president ronald reagan led the way with privatization outsourcing and load shedding of public responsibilities but the shift in direction was not limited to radicals on the right country reports

how to reform a planned economy lessons from china the countries of eastern europe and the former soviet union have been flooded with advice from the west on how to liberalize their planned econo mies this advice is unfortunately offered in an empirical vacuum no one knows how these econo mies will react to the proposed liberalization meas ures there exists however a neglected source of information china offers a long time series of data over a decade s worth on the effects of reforms on a planned economy china s reforms were gradual but their cumulative effect has been large and they have been remarkably successful china s experiments provide some practical les sons on what kinds of reforms can work elsewhere the dominant school of thought among economists favours the big bang policy of reforming quickly and according to a comprehensive plan partial reforms in this view are useless they will be negated by the remnants of the planning system the proponents of big bang reform have been influential with poland czechoslovakia and rus sia announcing plans for a rapid transition to capi talism

declining hegemony and assertive industrialization u s brazil conflicts in the computer industry alternative explanations for the formation of u s foreign economic policy are explored using the acrimonious but inconclusive conflict between the united states and its largest south american ally over brazil s restrictive policies toward the computer industry after comparing a post dependency bargaining perspective the theory of hegemonic stability and stephen krasner s structural conflict model the article argues that systemic perspectives on foreign economic policy must be complemented by an account of the interaction between the effects of international position and the dynamics of domestic politics the resulting politicized state centric approach which integrates interest based politics and ideologically defined state aims is proposed as a means of more fully understanding the dilemmas of a declining hegemon