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The rise of direct marketing of crude oil by state-owned enterprises from producer countries has added to the instability of world oil trade. The major cause of the rise of direct marketing was the changing structure of barriers to entry into the industry by new firms. Upstream, shifting entry barriers enabled state-owned enterprises increasingly to displace international companies; meanwhile, independents were increasing their share of refining capacity downstream. These changes contributed to the demise of traditional patterns of vertical integration. But these vertically integrated linkages had served to stabilize world oil trade, so their demise added to the turbulence of the international market. In response, both governments and firms from oil-importing countries have sought, with mixed success, to create new ties to sellers in order to stabilize the market.

AbstractDo neighborhood conditions affect wealth accumulation? This study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort and a counterfactual estimation strategy to analyze the effect of prolonged exposure to neighborhood (dis)advantage from emerging adulthood through middle adulthood. Neighborhoods have sizable, plausibly causal effects on wealth, but these effects vary significantly by race/ethnicity and homeownership. White homeowners receive the largest payoff to reductions in neighborhood disadvantage. Black adults, regardless of homeownership, are doubly disadvantaged in the neighborhood–wealth relationship. They live in more-disadvantaged neighborhoods and receive little return to reductions in neighborhood disadvantage. Findings indicate that disparities in neighborhood (dis)advantage figure prominently in wealth inequality and the racial wealth gap.

The focus of this paper is on the management and governance of education at provincial level – specifically on efforts to introduce performance management into education by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), and their impact. Post-1994 the WCED inherited a bureaucracy that was well placed to manage the province's large public education system. Subsequently, irrespective of which political party has been in power, the WCED consistently has sought to implement performance management. This paper explores to what extent determined, top-down efforts, led by the public sector, can improve dismal educational performance. The paper concludes that the WCED is (and long has been) a relatively well-run public bureaucracy. However, the sustained, determined efforts to strengthen the operation of the WCED's bureaucracy have not translated into systematic improvements in schools in poorer areas. One possible implication is that efforts to strengthen hierarchy might usefully be complemented with additional effort to support more horizontal, peer-to-peer governance at the school level.

Intro -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- About the Authors -- 1. Governance and Economic Development in Africa: Meeting the Challenge of Capacity Building -- 2. Comparative Experience with Public Service Reform in Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia -- 3. Building State Capacity in Africa: Learning from Performance and Results -- 4. Reforming Pay Policy: Techniques, Sequencing, and Politics -- 5. Cabinets, Budgets, and Poverty: Political Commitment to Poverty Reduction -- 6. Public Expenditure Accountability in Africa: Progress, Lessons, and Challenges -- 7. Emerging Legislatures: Institutions of Horizontal Accountability -- 8. Process Interventions Versus Structural Reforms: Institutionalizing Anticorruption Reforms in Africa -- 9. The Politics of Decentralization in Africa: A Comparative Analysis -- 10. Education Decentralization in Africa: A Review of Recent Policy and Practice -- 11. Reflections -- Index.