474,226 research outputs found

    evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

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    Thesis(Master) --KDI School:Master of Public Policy,2018Institutional quality and trade have been found to influence economic performance in several empirical studies investigating the separate effect of trade and institutions on growth. Recent studies examining the simultaneous effect of instrumented measures of both variables on growth observe a significant impact for institutional quality, but not trade. This they often ascribe to the “primacy” of institutions. In this paper, we revisit the argument by employing an IV estimator and a “modern” panel data technique, system GMM, to investigate the partial effect of trade and institutions on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), for the period 2000 – 2016. Using IV-2SLS, our findings confirm a positive impact for rule of law with no significant impact for trade. But then, our first-stage results show commonly used instruments for trade and institutions in the literature, which are also employed in this study, are themselves highly correlated, rendering our IV estimates unreliable. Using system GMM however, our findings indicate positive effect for trade and various measures of institutional quality on growth in SSA. Of measures of institutional quality, political stability and control of corruption are the most important followed by government effectiveness, rule of law and voice and accountability in that order.1 INTRODUCTION 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 3 METHODOLOGY 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 5 CONCLUDING REMARKS AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONOutstandingmasterpublishedJunior ABDUL-WAHAB

    a Latin America perspective

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    Thesis(Master) --KDI School:Master of Development Policy,2015The development literature has long examined the relationship between foreign aid and governance with a focus on Africa, employing governance indicators such as the ‘rule of law’ and ‘corruption,’ mainly from the ICRG (International Country Risk Guide). This study suggests a different approach with wider variance in the governance indicators and from the conventional focus on the African region. The study looks at the level of aid as a share of GNI in 16 former Spanish colonies in Latin America from 1999 to 2013, and assesses its impact on the region’s governance qualities. The six governance indicators adopted in this study are (i) accountability, (ii) transparency, (iii) rule of law, (iv) government effectiveness, (v) regulatory quality, and (vi) political stability. The empirical findings from this study present some interesting results, and leave an implication that aid alone is not enough; aid should be complementary to other policy measures to combat the social, economic, and political structural barriers that hinder development as a whole, in particular the quality of governance in the Latin America.masterpublishedHana CHANG

    Does Medical Malpractice Law Improve Health Care Quality?

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    Despite the fundamental role of deterrence in justifying a system of medical malpractice law, surprisingly little evidence has been put forth to date bearing on the relationship between medical liability forces on the one hand and medical errors and health care quality on the other. In this paper, we estimate this relationship using clinically validated measures of health care treatment quality constructed using data from the 1979 to 2005 National Hospital Discharge Surveys and the 1987 to 2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System records. Drawing upon traditional, remedy-centric tort reforms — e.g., damage caps — we estimate that the current liability system plays at most a modest role in inducing higher levels of health care quality. We contend that this limited independent role for medical liability may be a reflection upon the structural nature of the present system of liability rules, which largely hold physicians to standards determined according to industry customs. We find evidence suggesting, however, that physician practices may respond more significantly upon a substantive alteration of this system altogether — i.e., upon a change in the clinical standards to which physicians are held in the first instance. The literature to date has largely failed to appreciate the substantive nature of liability rules and may thus be drawing limited inferences based solely on our experiences to date with damage-caps and related reforms

    Judging Measures

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    The question of how to optimally design judicial institutions is one of central importance to the scholarship focused on courts. Basic questions such as whether there should be mandatory retirement for judges, whether judges should be expected to write their own opinions and whether greater racial or gender diversity on the courts improves decision making are optimal design questions. Given the vast variation in the types of judicial system designs used around the world (and even within the United States), it should be possible to conduct a comparative analysis of the relative efficacy of the different designs. These comparisons cannot be evaluated, however, without first tackling the matter of how to measure justice or judicial performance. Although within the legal academy and the judiciary there is considerable skepticism and hostility to the measurement project, we argue that the project is worth attempting for both judges and academics. That said, the simple measures often used today, while necessary, cannot be relied on exclusively. To achieve a more reliable and useful measurement, judges must be involved in the process of arriving at the right characteristics to measure and the right ways to measure them. If judges get involved in improving the quality of data collection and measurement, the inherent dangers in empirical analysis of the judiciary will both be recognized and more effectively navigated. At the same time, empirical analysis with judicial participation is more likely to assist judges and judicial policymakers

    Entrepreneurial entry: which institutions matter?

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    In this paper we explore the relationship between the individual decision to become an entrepreneur and the institutional context. We pinpoint the critical roles of property rights and the size of the state sector for entrepreneurial activity and test the relationships empirically by combining country-level institutional indicators for 44 countries with working age population survey data taken from the Global Enterprise Monitor. A methodological contribution is the use of factor analysis to reduce the statistical problems with the array of highly collinear institutional indicators. We find that the key institutional features that enhance entrepreneurial activity are indeed the rule of law and limits to the state sector. However, these results are sensitive to the level of development

    Which type of democracy performs best?

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    Which type of democracy performs best? While some scholars argue that an electoral system with proportional representation combined with a decentralized system works best, and that the type of electoral system is crucial (Lijphart 1999), others state that a proportional electoral system with a centralized (and hence not decentralized) system lead to better performance (Gerring et al. 2005; Gerring and Thacker 2008). Still other scholars claim that decentralization is crucial, particularly in countries with deeply divided societies (Norris 2008). In this article, we argue that Lijphart’s earlier 1960s work needs to be combined with his more recent 1990s work, which results in an eightfold classification. This cube with eight different types of democracy not only enables us to compare the three rival claims in a systematic way, but is also a helpful tool for future studies focusing on types of democratic systems, and their origins and consequences. Our findings show that the type of electoral system is always crucial; the other two dimensions are crucial as well, though under different circumstances. In order to achieve the highest level of good governance, the best choice for the type of political system (centralization or decentralization) depends on the structure of the society (homogeneous or not). Centralization is best in homogeneous societies, while decentralization is best in heterogeneous societies. We recommend that future studies take into account all eight different types of democracy that can be distinguished based on Lijphart’s theoretical arguments in earlier and later work

    Foreign Direct Investment and Structural Reforms: Evidence from Eastern Europe and Latin America

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    This paper investigates the role of structural reforms ñ privatization, financial reform and trade liberalizationñ as determinants of FDI inflows based on newly constructed dataset on structural reforms for 19 Latin American and 25 Eastern European countries between 1989 and 2004. Our main finding is a strong empirical relationship from reforms to FDI, in particular, from financial liberalization and privatization. These results are robust to different measures of reforms, split samples, and potential endogeneity and omitted variables biases.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64417/1/wp906.pd

    Measuring Judges and Justice

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