Suchergebnisse

AbstractPrevious work into the decision to search or not for work when unemployed has found that local unemployment rates, education level and social networks are important in the case of South Africa. This paper introduces a number of additional variables in order to test what other factors are associated with this decision. It is found that previous work experience, job security of the households employed members, whether there is a state pensioner in the unemployed person's household, poverty and proximity to public transport are all connected to the decision to varying degrees. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We study the effect of former Communist party membership on paying bribes to public officials and motivations for bribery, 25 years after the fall of communist rule. Data come from a large representative survey, conducted in post-socialist countries in 2015/16. To deal with endogeneity, we instrument party membership with information on whether family members were affected by the Second World War. Instrumental variable results suggest that links to the former Communist party increase the likelihood of paying bribes today; this result applies to the former party members as well as their children and relatives. Among bribe payers, people with the party links are more likely to offer bribes as well as think that bribe payments are expected. Overall, our findings suggest that the proclivity to corruption of the former Communist party members has been transmitted through family and thus sustained over time, contributing to corruption decades after the demise of the Socialist bloc.

Many resource-rich countries have experienced a range of negative economic and political effects from natural resource extraction, often lumped together as the 'resource curse'. This article investigates to what extent expectations of future natural resource booms in São Tomé e Príncipe and Madagascar led to 'resource curse' effects, even though these countries did not experience the expected booms. It finds that both countries experienced resource curse effects as a result of future expectations, including volatile economic growth and eroded governance. The article demonstrates that shared aspirations and expectations alone may make for material political and economic outcomes even when they become visibly divorced from reality. Thus, there is much more to resource curse effects than simply the product of the material extraction of natural endowments. At a time of extremely volatile prices for primary commodities, and the relatively easy availability of investment capital and credit to support speculative ventures that in turn incentivize resource hype, it is likely that a growing number of countries may suffer the malign effects of a resource curse without natural resource extraction. ; Full Text