33,193 research outputs found

    The Firms Speak: What the World Business Environment Survey Tells Us about Constraints on Private Sector Development

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    This chapter summarizes the salient results of the World Business Environment Survey (WBES). It shows that important dimensions of the climate for business operation and investment can be measured, analyzed, and compared across countries, and that governance is key to the business environment and investment climate. The survey findings suggest that key policy, institutional, and governance indicators affect the growth of a firm's sales and investment and the extent to which firms operate in the unofficial economy. Further, the paper provides empirical support for some commonly held notions, while challenging others. It suggests a link between taxation, financing, and corruption on the one hand, and growth and investment on the other, and it highlights the costs to economies where the state is captured by a narrow set of private interests.

    Informal Manufacturing Sector in India: Pre and Post Reform Growth Dynamics

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    The informal manufacturing sector (IMS) in India has been a major part of the economy. Whether its growth is due to entry of people in distress, or whether it is a vibrant and growth oriented sector is debatable. In this paper, the growth dynamics of IMS in India over the period 1984 to 2000 is explored with special reference to the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and plausible factors determining the growth pattern are sought to be identified. This growth is observed to be neither smooth nor uniform. The IMS cannot be labelled either a distress driven sink or a dynamic alternative economic avenue in blanket term as existence of both the segments are detected. While sustainability of the distress driven segment is questionable, the dynamic segment is likely to act as the engine of future growth. Distinctly different sets of policies are recommended for the two different segments of IMS.Informal Sector; Regional Development; Unorganised Manufacturing

    A Survey on Handover Management in Mobility Architectures

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    This work presents a comprehensive and structured taxonomy of available techniques for managing the handover process in mobility architectures. Representative works from the existing literature have been divided into appropriate categories, based on their ability to support horizontal handovers, vertical handovers and multihoming. We describe approaches designed to work on the current Internet (i.e. IPv4-based networks), as well as those that have been devised for the "future" Internet (e.g. IPv6-based networks and extensions). Quantitative measures and qualitative indicators are also presented and used to evaluate and compare the examined approaches. This critical review provides some valuable guidelines and suggestions for designing and developing mobility architectures, including some practical expedients (e.g. those required in the current Internet environment), aimed to cope with the presence of NAT/firewalls and to provide support to legacy systems and several communication protocols working at the application layer

    Certified Organic Agriculture: Policy Instrument for Sustainable Development?

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    This article analyse Certified Organic Agriculture as a proxy for Policy Instruments for Sustainable Development

    Informality in Latin America and the Caribbean

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    This paper studies the causes and consequences of informality and applies the analysis to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. It starts with a discussion on the definition and measures of informality, as well as on the reasons why widespread informality should be of great concern. The paper analyzes informality's main determinants, arguing that informality is not single-caused but results from the combination of poor public services, a burdensome regulatory regime, and weak monitoring and enforcement capacity by the state. This combination is especially explosive when the country suffers from low educational achievement and features demographic pressures and primary production structures. Using cross-country regression analysis, the paper evaluates the empirical relevance of each determinant of informality. It then applies the estimated relationships to most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in order to assess the country-specific relevance of each proposed mechanism.Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Population Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Debt Markets

    Fiscal federalism in Switzerland : relevant issues for transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe

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    Its highly fragmented structure of local governments and serious horizontal fiscal imbalances make Switzerland a surprisingly powerful model for Eastern European countries that are currently facing the challenge of fiscal decentralization. In spite of the substantial differences in the tradition and current practice of intergovernmental fiscal relations, transition economies may learn valuable lessons from the Swiss case in the fields of direct democracy, horizontal cooperation, expenditure and revenue assignment, and fiscal discipline. Among other conclusions, the authors suggest that subnational authorities can effectively fend off recentralization attempts of the central government if they engage in spontaneous cooperation to enhance the efficiency of public service provision. Together with an adequate fiscal equalization scheme, interjurisdictional cooperation also permits the reconciliation of the objective of an increasing devolution of powers with the existing regional disparities. The authors also show that the principle of subsidiarity can best be safeguarded by anchoring the expenditure and revenue powers of subnational governments in the constitution or in a similarly strong law. With regard to fiscal discipline, the combination of a"golden rule"with direct democratic instruments of budget control is proven to be successful in enhancing the accountability of local politicians toward their constituencies.
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