market state and civil organizations in latin america beyond the debt crisis the context for rural development abstract the development strategy emerging in latin america implies a sharply redefined balance in the relative roles of the market the state and civil organizations market liberalization has been extensive and intense efforts have been undertaken to make the new rules credible the state has been divested of many productive and regulatory activities but descaling is a reflection of short run stabilization policies and signaling not of long term tendencies since an active state remains strongly in demand civil organizations are assuming active roles as alternative forms to produce and service members and as pressure groups agriculture has gained considerably from the policy reforms together with democratic representation and decentralization of governance this gives renewed opportunities for successful rural development initiatives

a three gap model of foreign transfers and the gdp growth rate in developing countries abstract a simplified macroeconomic framework is developed for the fiscal gap which is considered to be an important stumbling block for adjustment with growth in highly indebted developing countries distinctive characteristics of a fiscally constrained economy are compared with those of economies constrained either by the availability of savings or foreign exchange tentative implications for external conditionality accompanying debt relief measures are derived

technological capabilities and industrialization abstract this paper reviews the implications for industrial strategy of recent research on technological capabilities at the firm and national levels after exploring the nature and determinants of microlevel technological development a simple framework for explaining the growth of national capabilities is set out based on the interplay of incentives capabilities and institutions each may suffer market failure and so require corrective intervention the experience of some industrializing countries is described to assess the validity of this framework it is concluded that interventions carefully and selectively applied are necessary for industrial success

brazilian privatization in the 1990s abstract this paper makes a partial assessment of the brazilian privatization program in the 1990s the article focuses mainly on the fiscal impact of asset sales which we argue has been relatively small we conclude that the failure of the governments attemps has reduced the fiscal benefits of privatization and inhibited the goverment s capacity to impose limits on buyers who have increased their market power through the acquisition of state owned enterprises in practice the main objective of the privatization program has been to highlight the commitment to market orieted reforms in a certain sense privatization has created its own logic beyond its original objectives

the special problems of small countries abstract the paper describes the characteristics of small economies and discusses the advantages and disadvantages arising from these characteristics it is shown that small economies by their very nature tend to be less diversified and to have relatively high foreign trade risks in spite of these drawbacks a number of small economies have achieved high rates of economic growth some reasons given to explain this success are the relatively small size of the agricultural sector concentration on labor intensive exports and sociological and psychological factors such as the ability to respond in a flexible manner to changes the paper ends with a discussion on whether the drawbacks of small size can be overcome by economic integration it is argued that the experience in this regard is disappointing

market stimulating technology policies in developing countries a framework with examples from east asia abstract this paper proposes an analytical framework for technology development based upon evolutionary approaches and drawing upon asian development strategies the analysis rests on the concept of market stimulating technology policies comprising a broad array of policies to promote industrial and technological development some market and others government determined these policies may be functional horizontal or vertical and can be analyzed at three levels national strategic and specific the paper suggests that strategic choices are involved at all stages that cannot be resolved entirely by recourse to free markets

directly unproductive profit seeking dup activities this paper propses directly unproductive profit seeking dup activities as a general concept that embraces a wide range of recently analyzed economic activities including the subset of rent seeking activities considered by krueger it then proceeds to provide a synthesis and generalization of the welfare theoretic analysis of such activities by developing a fourfold categorization of cases depending on the levels of distortions before and after the dup activity thus a unification and overview of the subject are achieved

the implications of increasing economic openness for real wages in developing countries 1973 1990 abstract our study shows that increasing economic openness is neither necessarily good nor necessarily bad for real wage growth in developing countries economic growth investment share growth and productivity growth not export share growth are the determinants of real wage growth we also find that the story of wage determination changed in the 1980s compared to the 1970s this change may be due to the implications of heightened competitive pressures in the world market or it may be the result of the debt crisis the main policy implication of our findings is that governments who want to promote growth and the living standards of their workers have to focus explicitly and primarily on increasing investment and productivity growth

industrial policy and exchange rate scepticism the aim of the present paper is to put in historical perspective the development thinking on the relationship between industrial and exchange rate policies the first section focuses on the thought of the so called pioneers of development economics specifically their preference for protectionism and their belated recognition that an exchange rate policy could act as a substitute to it in the second one we analyze the exchange rate skepticism that arises out of the theories that identify a foreign constraint to growth in addition to the one revealed by the pioneers the third section briefly complements the previous discussion with reference to macroeconomic formulations that allow for short run contractionary effects of a devaluation reinforcing the skepticism in question in the fourth section we discuss the revival of development thinking in the 1980s and its discussion about east asian trajectories a literature that placed great emphasis on industrial policy finally in the fifth section we discuss the new historical facts and the new development macroeconomics models that are putting an end to exchange rate skepticism

sustainable development an introduction abstract the methodologies and key results of the papers in this special issue are summarized with emphasis on the limits to growth that developing and postsocialist economies are likely to face over the coming 5 to 10 years

exports economic growth and the consolidation of peace in el salvador abstract the pillars of inclusive growth in el salvador have to be nontraditional export growth investment and government determination to reduce income inequality and poverty this article analyzes the key obstacles to the development of a competitive and dynamic export sector dutch disease driven by aid and remittances a significant decline in real wages and lack of productivity growth policies can and must focus on productivity growth rather than wage repression in the pursuit of peace consolidation and long term competitiveness

reasonable doubt and the optimal magnitude of fines should the penalty fit the crime models of the enforcement compliance relationship have assumed that both the probability and magnitude of fines are independent choice variables of policy makers these models indicate that it may be optimal to monitor with lowfrequency but to inflict uniformly maximal penalties for all infractions detected this article shows that if the judicial system is built on the reasonable doubt test then the penalty and the probability of conviction are not independent in particular as the penalty increases the probability of conviction falls as a result uniformly maximal penalties may actually encourage crime rather than deter it this article shows that optimal fines should rise with the severity of the infraction that is the penalty should fit the crime models of the enforcement compliance relationship generally treat both the probability and magnitude of fines as independent choice variables of the government this approach has led becker 1968 and others to conclude that it is optimal to set uniformly maximal penalties for all crimes and to set the probability of conviction at the minimum level necessary to enforce compliance with the law while this normative prescription is natural and intuitive there still remains a larger positive question of why in most nations of the world penalties are not uniformly high but rather rise with the severity of the crime one possible resolution of the positive and normative questions may lie in the fact that penalties and probabilities of conviction are not generally independent convictions are typically determined by judges or jurors who are instructed to convict only if the evidence convinces them beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty psychologists however have found that a juror s willingness to convict may be influenced by more than just the evidence jurors are very sensitive to the potential penalties that defendants may pay

markets and states against minimalism abstract this paper argues against the currently fashionable case for state minimalism or laissez faire it not only argues for a strong state but also for an activist one though operating on a different basis from the many recently failed interventionist states the argument is developed via a critique of a series of overstated or one sided propositions that bolster the state minimalist position these include the notion of price distortions of inherently inefficient public enterprise of an unambiguous dividing line between the public and the private sectors and of statism as inherently rent seeking the paper seeks to rescue alternative perspectives from outside neoclassical political economy approach such as the importance of civil society and the need for a nonmaximizing theory of the state successful liberalization programs may require more intervention of a different kind at least for a transitional period a broad view of democracy is required allowing the possibility of state action guided by motives of public interest

the state and industrial strategy abstract the debate about the role of the state in promoting industrial growth in developing economies is reviewed we begin with the ideas of the early development economists of the 1950s and 1960s then take up two waves of neoclassical criticism respectively emphasizing the primacy of the market and the lack of autonomy and competence of the developmentalist state and sketch the elements of a countercritique the fact that all successfully developing economies apply industrial strategies incorporating institutional change is emphasized and boundary conditions and lessons from experience which delimit sensible strategic choices are pointed out

controls corruption and competitive rent seeking in ldcs the paper establishes that equality between the average return of factors engaged in rent seeking and those in productive activity does not generally imply equality between the efficiency losses from rent seeking and the rents themselves such equality is often assumed in the literature a stylized cge model is used to illustrate the sensitivity of the estimated losses to the specification of the rent seeking mechanism it also illustrates the interdependence between the effects of taxes or subsidies and rent seeking for example when rent seeking involves post secondary graduates competing for government jobs which yield incomes from corruption the efficiency losses are affected by subsidies to education

crime versus justice is there a trade off abstract when society is divided into two groups with different actual or perceived crime rates maintaining a low crime rate minimizing the total number of innocent individuals convicted of a crime and keeping the probability of wrongly convicting an innocent individual equal across groups are incompatible social goals this paper fully develops these trade offs an empirical application of the model finds that these trade offs may be substantial specifically we estimate that innocent black americans would be roughly eight times more likely to be wrongly convicted of murder than innocent white americans if society placed no value on equality when it comes to convictions however we estimate that eliminating inequality entirely could cost up to 1 900 lives annually because of a rise in the murder rate estimates reveal similar findings for gender inequality in highlighting this serious dilemma this paper suggests a need for awareness of costs of crime reduction policies

the rocky road to reform trade industrial financial and agricultural strategies abstract this paper reviews recent issues of economic reform in developing countries based on studies undertaken for the world institute for development economics research wider emphasis is placed on a novel 3 gap adjustment model for savings investment trade and fiscal limitations at the macro level and a distinction between allocative and productive efficiency microeconomically issues of stabilization and adjustment and trade industrial policy financial reform privatization market deregulation and the agrarian question are discussed

trade patterns in developing countries 1964 82 this paper presents a regression analysis of import and export shares of gdp for 14 commodity and service categories in 55 developing countries over the period 1964 82 explanatory variables include gnp per capita population domestic capacity utilization the effective exchange rate and oecd real gnp for exports among other findings it is shown that countries trade patterns are not closely related to their growth performance and that developing countries on average run surpluses of exports over non capital goods imports on merchandise trade the current commodity surplus is required to offset imports of capital goods and a structural deficit on factor and non factor service trade

explaining the decision to repeal an optional local tax county governments in pennsylvania have had the option to repeal the intangible property tax since 1978 as of 1992 27 of pennsylvania s 66 counties had repealed it an attempt is made to explain empirically the probability of repeal in this paper the empirical model accounts for a large part of the variation across counties the results show that the probability of levying the intangible property tax is positively related to the projected change in the real estate tax rate further it was found that revenue diversification and several taste and political variables significantly influence the repeal decision these findings are consistent with those of previous tax adoption studies the evidence however does not show the exportation of real estate taxes to have the expected effect on the probability of repeal

can the east asian model of development be generalized abstract export led growth has become increasingly popular among analysts and some governments as a development strategy besides contrasting its virtues to the distortions of the import substitution model popular through the 1960s advocates of the model frequently illustrate its merits by pointing to the remarkable success of its most prominent practitioners the east asian gang of four hong kong korea singapore and taiwan this study explores a possible limitation of the model known as the fallacy of composition while the model may work well if pursued by a limited number of countries it may break down if a large majority of developing countries seeks to pursue it at the same time because the resulting outpouring of manufactured exports might be more than western markets could absorb protectionist response might be the result of attempts to generalize the east asian export model of growth

the politics of adjustment the african case abstract food aid has been used consciously and increasingly for promoting structural adjustment and has had a major impact on the economic programmes of many states in the 1980s particularly in africa this article considers the politics of adjustment programmes and food aid and the dilemmas which arise including the effects of food subsidies conditionality overhead costs varying food needs and attitudes towards food aid new approaches and more coordination are needed if food aid to africa in particular is to be even moderately effective in aiding countries making major policy changes

the politics of adjustment lessons from the imf s extended fund facility the international debt crisis has forced painful economic adjustments on the developing world in the short run it has forced governments to seek to correct payments imbalances through stabilization programs usually undertaken with conditional assistance from the international monetary fund imf the crisis has also revealed deeper weaknesses in many third world economies weaknesses demanding more basic reforms in the structure of incentives prices and investment

trade strategy in medium term adjustment abstract trade strategy is prominent in current discussions of stabilization and adjustment the orientation of trade strategy can be categorized according to revealed trade performance or characteristics of incentive structures or the nature of the main policy instruments the record of trade stratedy in developing countries has been richer and more complex than currently fashionable dichotomous categorizations in terms of inward or outward orientation suggest many trade strategy and policy issues remain unsettled these include the effects and optimal timing of import liberalization the appropriate instruments for export promotion trade policy concomitants of productivity change and interactions with microeconomic experience and policies among others more country specific and industry specific empirical research is necessary

the origins and sustainability of mexico s free trade policy standard explanations for trade liberalization do not fully account for mexico s turn toward free trade during the 1980s to a large extent the initiative came from within the country even many mexican entrepreneurs whose sectors seem likely to lose from increased competition now support trade liberalization four conditions lowered the political cost benefit ratio for policymakers and entrepreneurs first mexico s leaders dispersed implementation into several financial ministries thereby better insulating this policy from lobbying by the likely losers second potential losers were less well informed than were likely winners third under these conditions the liberal ideological biases of mexican elite policymakers and investors flourished prompting them to accept a higher political cost than would have been tolerated otherwise finally many mexicans came to perceive trade liberalization as a necessary tool in the fight against inflation each of these hypotheses however also flags a possible threat to the policy s future political survival