Effective economic governance is a key condition for economic growth and development, and donor support to developing countries has increasingly been focused on regulatory reforms that are intended to enable markets to function more efficiently thereby providing a stable and supportive environment for investment, private sector development, and market-led economic growth. This article reviews t...

A modernizing nation’s economic prosperity requires at least a modest legal infrastructure centered on the protection of property and contract rights. The essential legal reform required to create that infrastructure may be the adoption of a system of relatively precise legal rules, as distinct from more open-ended standards or a heavy investment in upgrading the nation’s judiciary. A virtuous ...

China's income distribution has experienced tremendous changes since the economic reform. Labor economists have reached a consensus that the income inequality has spiked in the decade from 1980s to 1990s while there has been some debate for the following decade in its income distribution trend. Along with the economic reform, the unparalleled enormous internal migration population has become an...

China has enjoyed thirty years seemingly unstoppable high speed economic growth. During the new Xi Era, Chinese government starts a reform aimed at anti-corruption and contractionary welfare provision policy to combat economic and social challenges. This paper seeks to explain why different types of government embedment in two provinces results in different societal and economic reaction to the...

Housing reform has been a key component in China's economic revitalization program initiated by the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping since 1978. By reforming the welfare housing system, the Chinese government aims at the removal of a burden (i.e., welfare housing) from state finance. At the same time, housing reform will stimulate changes in consumption, investment, and related industrial se...

We examine the impact of the economic reform programme on the financing choices of Zimbabwean listed companies. Using the published accounts of a sample of companies we show that listed firms rely heavily on external finance, especially short term bank financing. We estimate an eclectic econometric model of firms’ capital structure based on key predictions from the theory of finance, augmented ...

The paper reviews the experience of Poland and Russia with economic reform, with occasional comparison to China’s experience. The author argues that macroeconomic chaos in Poland and Russia preceded reform and was allayed by reform; that there is no necessary tradeoff between reform and growth, and that the Polish and Russian experience shows that it is possible to create clear property rights ...

The traditional Chinese planned economic system was formed during the first several years of the founding of PRC. Under this system, all sorts of behaviors by individuals, economic organizations and administrative organizations for their interests restrained vigor of the economy. Cost of this system was extremely high, but its efficiency was rather low. Reform started in the late 1970s has take...

France is currently embarking upon a drastic reform of quantitative water resources management. This reform relies on two principles: the definition of an upper limit to water abstraction per water body and the decentralization of the responsibility for allocating water among users, in particular in the agricultural sector. This paper looks at possible institutional arrangements and incentive-b...

Article history: Received 23 February 2011 Received in revised form 25 April 2012 Accepted 3 May 2012 Available online 12 May 2012 A behavioral political economy framework is built on the basis of prospect theory to explain the induced and imposed institutional changes during China's market reform, giving special attention to the integrated effects of economic and political institutions. Accord...