Pursuant to Article 1 of the Convention signed in Paris on 14th December 1960, and which came into force on 30th September 1961, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shall promote policies designed: − to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising standard of living in Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and thus t...

OBJECTIVES Vietnam started its health reform process two decades ago, initiated by economic reform in 1986. Economic reform has rapidly changed the socio-economic environment with the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-oriented economy. Health reform in Vietnam has been associated with the introduction of user fees, the legalization of private medical practices, and the com...

Report on a desktop study commissioned by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) This paper was prepared under contract with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The positions and opinions presented are those of the author alone, and are not intended to represent the views of FAO. 2 CONTENTS List of Tables 4 Abbreviations used in the text 4 Acknowledgements 4 ...

Turkmenistan’s economic performance during the first decade after independence isinteresting because it is an extreme case, regularly ranking last among all the former centrallyplanned economies by transition indicators measuring speed of reform or degree of economicliberalization. This paper analyses the evolution of the economic system and Turkmenistan’seconomic development si...

Hausmann et al. (2004, 2005 and 2006) provide an important reminder of the implications of the theory of the ‘second best’. In the economist’s world of ‘first best’, an economic distortion is analysed as if it were the only distortion, and its removal can be assumed to increase community welfare (barring adverse equity effects). In the world of the second best, however, there are many distortio...

Did Political Constraints Bind During Transition? Evidence from Czech Elections 1990-2002 Many theoretical models of transition are driven by the assumption that economic decision making is subject to political constraints. In this paper we empirically test whether the winners and losers of economic reform determined voting behaviour in the first five national elections in the Czech Republic. W...