Suchergebnisse

Conventional wisdom suggests that lobbying is the preferred means for exerting political influence in rich countries and corruption the preferred one in poor countries. Analyses of their joint effects are understandably rare. This paper provides a theoretical framework that focus on the relationship between lobbying and corruption (that is, it investigates under what conditions they are complements or substitutes). The paper also offers novel econometric evidence on lobbying, corruption and influence using data for about 4000 firms in 25 transition countries. Our results show that (a) lobbying and corruption are substitutes, if anything; (b) firm size, age, ownership, per capita GDP and political stability are important determinants of lobby membership; and (c) lobbying seems to be a much more effective instrument for political influence than corruption, even in poorer, less developed countries. Adapted from the source document.

We construct objective measures of privatization, internal and external liberalization reform efforts, across countries over time, and investigate their determinants, reversals and macroeconomic impacts. We find that GDP growth determines external liberalization and privatization, concentration of political power drives internal liberalization, and democracy underpins all three. We find that FDI inflows reduce the probability of privatization reversals, labour strikes increase that of internal liberalization reversals, and OECD growth increase that of external liberalization reversals. We replicate previous studies and find that the macroeconomic effects of reform (when measured objectively) tend to be larger and more precisely estimated.

Conventional wisdom suggests that lobbying is the preferred mean for exerting political influence in rich countries and corruption the preferred one in poor countries. Analyses of their joint effects are understandably rare. This paper provides a theoretical framework that focus on the relationship between lobbying and corruption (that is, it investigates under what conditions they are complements or substitutes). The paper also offers novel econometric evidence on lobbying, corruption and influence using data for about 4000 firms in 25 transition countries. Our results show that (a) lobbying and corruption are substitutes, if anything; (b) firm size, age, ownership, per capita GDP and political stability are important determinants of lobby membership; and (c) lobbying seems to be a much more effective instrument for political influence than corruption, even in poorer, less developed countries

II est communément admis que la nature et les causes du secteur informel dans les économies en transition sont les mêmes que dans les pays en développement. Cette analyse est remise ici en question. Premièrement, l'auteur estime que leur nature diffère : alors que les activités informelles dans les pays en développement sont intensives en travail, dans les économies en transition, elles sont intensives en capital. Deuxièmement, il avance que la cause principale de l'informel dans la transition n'est pas une ingérence publique excessive (comme dans les pays en développement) mais l'absence d'une tradition de l'État de droit. L'auteur défend ce point de vue et présente des données économétriques qui confirment qu'il s'agit là d'une piste de recherche plus prometteuse.

During the transition from plan to market, managers and politicians succeeded in maintaining control of large parts of the stock of socialist physical capital. Despite the obvious importance of this phenomenon, there have been no efforts to model, measure and investigate this process empirically. This paper tries to fill this gap by putting forward theory and econometric evidence. We argue that asset stripping is driven by the interplay between the firm's potential profitability and its ability to influence law enforcement. Our econometric results, for about 950 firms in five transition economies, provide support for this argument.

Although the theoretical literature has identified various sizeable benefits from foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, the empirical literature has been unable to establish a positive and significant impact of FDI on the rates of economic growth of host countries. One reason for this difficulty is that theory equates FDI to technology transferred, while in most countries and regions of the world FDI encompasses an array of arrangements that goes well beyond pure technology transfer. This paper tests for the effects of FDI on growth in a set of countries in which FDI is pure technology transferred: the 25 Central and Eastern European and former Soviet Union transition countries between 1990 and 1998. Our main finding is that, in this more appropriate setting, FDI has a positive and significant impact on economic growth as theory predicts.