3.1 The challenges outlined in chapter 2 may seem daunting. But a growing number of countries are making significant improvements to their investment climates—and are being richly rewarded in faster growth and steeper poverty reductions. China, India, and Uganda, mentioned for their achievements in chapter 1, are hardly alone. Many countries have made progress in improving particular areas of t...

I want to thank the University of Connecticut for providing me this opportunity to comment on the important and challenging concept of the equilibrium real interest rate and its relevance to monetary policy. I will use this occasion to discuss the role that estimates of the equilibrium real federal funds rate can play in thinking about the desired degree of policy accommodation. Those views, I ...

H transport costs pose a significant barrier to development in africa. Causing friction in the movement of labour and goods, transport costs effectively reduce the markets for labour and goods, and for the transmission of knowledge and technologies. Reducing transport costs in contemporary Africa has become even more of a priority, with many countries having reduced tariffs on their internation...

Background Policy-making can be described as a complex decisionmaking process involving different actors engaged in negotiating their interests [1] and promoting different types of evidence. Policy informed by research evidence is widely seen as a good thing. However Monaghan [2] indicated that ‘Policy-makers may fish for evidence, select the beneficial bits and throw back those that are un-req...

To determine the incidence of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in soil in a rapid urbanization region, soil samples from various land use types in Shenzhen were collected in winter, 2007. The concentration of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethanes (DDTs) and hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs) ranged from non-detected to 149 ng g(-1) and 19 to 88 ng g(-1), respectively. The highest levels of OCPs were obse...

We formulate a dynamic model of party competition with a one-dimensional policy space. Policy choices at different times are linked because parties cannot change their policies abruptly; instead, policy adjustment happens gradually. Parties are uncertain of the median’s policy preferences at the time they choose their policies. Our results relate the steady state equilibrium of the dynamic game...