Understanding the Relationship between Institutions and Economic Development: Some Key Theoretical Issues

The paper tries to improve our understanding on the role of institutions in development by critically examining the current orthodox discourse on institutions and highlighting some of its key problems. After discussing some definitional problems, the chapter examines a number of problems in the orthodox literature arising from the widespread failure to distinguish between the forms and the functions of institution. Then it critically examines the excessive emphasis on property rights in the orthodox literature. Finally, it discusses a number of problems that arise from the simplistic view on institutional change that underlies the orthodox view on institutional persistence.institutions, forms and functions, institutional change, property rights

Stranger than Fiction? Understanding Institutional Changes and Economic Development

The volume Institutional Change and Economic Development fills some important gaps in our understanding of the relationship between institutional changes and economic development. It does so by developing new discourses on the 'technology of institution building' and by providing detailed case studies-historical and more recent-of institution building. It is argued that functional multiplicity, the importance of informal institutions, unintended consequences, and intended 'perversion' of institutions all imply that the orthodox recipe of importing 'best practice' formal institutions does not work. While denying the existence of universal formulas, the volume distills some general principles of institutions building from theoretical explorations and case studies.institutions, history, property rights, markets, ideas, technology, law, governance, bureaucracy, federalism,

State-Owned Enterprise Reform

This United Nations Policy Note on State-Owned Enterprise Reform provides practical guidance on alternative policies to reform SOEs and manage natural resource rents. This Policy Note has been developed in cooperation with UN agencies, and has been officially reviewed by distinguished academics/ development specialists such as Jose Antonio Ocampo, Jomo K.S. and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.state-owned enterprises, management natural resource rents, development planning

Chalcogen-height dependent magnetic interactions and magnetic order switching in FeSex_xTe1−x_{1-x}

Magnetic properties of iron chalcogenide superconducting materials are investigated using density functional calculations. We find the stability of magnetic phases is very sensitive to the height of chalcogen species from the Fe plane: while FeTe with optimized Te height has the double-stripe-type $(\pi,0)$ magnetic ordering, the single-stripe-type $(\pi,\pi)$ ordering becomes the ground state phase when Te height is lowered below a critical value by, e.g., Se doping. This behavior is understood by opposite Te-height dependences of the superexchange interaction and a longer-range magnetic interaction mediated by itinerant electrons. We also demonstrate a linear temperature dependence of the macroscopic magnetic susceptibility in the single-stripe phase in contrast to a constant behavior in the double-stripe phase. Our findings provide a comprehensive and unified view to understand the magnetism in FeSe$_x$Te$_{1-x}$ and iron pnictide superconductors.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Bootstrapping Cointegrating Regressions

In this paper, we consider bootstrapping cointegrating regressions. It is shown that the method of bootstrap, if properly implemented, generally yields consistent estimators and test statistics for cointegrating regressions. We do not assume any specific data generating process, and employ the sieve bootstrap based on the approximated finite-order vector autoregressions for the regression errors and the firrst differences of the regressors. In particular, we establish the bootstrap consistency for OLS method. The bootstrap method can thus be used to correct for the finite sample bias of the OLS estimator and to approximate the asymptotic critical values of the OLS-based test statistics in general cointegrating regressions. The bootstrap OLS procedure, however, is not efficient. For the efficient estimation and hypothesis testing, we consider the procedure proposed by Saikkonen (1991) and Stock and Watson (1993) relying on the regression augmented with the leads and lags of differenced regressors. The bootstrap versions of their procedures are shown to be consistent, and can be used to do inferences that are asymptotically valid. A Monte Carlo study is conducted to investigate the finite sample performances of the proposed bootstrap methods.

Ellipsometric measurement of liquid film thickness

The immediate objective of this research is to measure liquid film thickness from the two equilibrium phases of a monotectic system in order to estimate the film pressure of each phase. Thus liquid film thicknesses on the inside walls of the prism cell above the liquid level have been measured elliposmetrically for the monotectic system of succinonitrile and water. The thickness varies with temperature and composition of each plane. The preliminary results from both layers at 60 deg angle of incidence show nearly uniform thickness from about 21 to 23 C. The thickness increases with temperature but near 30 C the film appears foggy and scatters the laser beam. As the temperature of the cell is raised beyond room temperature it becomes increasingly difficult to equalize the temperature inside and outside the cell. The fogging may also be an indication that solution, not pure water, is adsorbed onto the substrate. Nevertheless, preliminary results suggest that ellipsometric measurement is feasible and necessary to measure more accurately and rapidly the film thickness and to improve thermal control of the prism walls

Institutions of Macroeconomic Management History, Theory, and Practice

This paper demonstrates that institutions matter for the macro-economy a great deal, and therefore that we need to explicitly incorporate institutional factors in macroeconomic theory. It draws extensively on the history of the development of institutions of macroeconomic management in today's developed countries while Chang's ultimate interest is the role of institutions in the macroeconomic management in developing countries. Note: The opinions expressed in these papers represent those of the author(s) and not The Initiative for Policy Dialogue. These papers are unpublished and have not been peer reviewed. Please do not cite without explicit permission from the author(s)

Inventory Model with Seasonal Demand: A Specific Application to Haute Couture

In the stochastic multiperiod inventory problem, a vast majority of the literature deals with demand volume uncertainty. Other dimensions of uncertainty have generally been overlooked. In this paper, we develop a newsboy formulation for the aggregate multiperiod inventory problem intended for products of short sales season and without replenishments. A distinguishing characteristic of our formulation is that it takes a time dimension of demand uncertainty into account. The proposed model is particularly suitable for applications in haute couture, i.e., high fashion industry. The model determines the time of switching primary sales effort from one season to the next as well as optimal order quantity for each season with the objective of maximizing expected profit over the planning horizon. We also derive the optimality conditions for the time of switching primary sales effort and order quantity. Furthermore, we show that if time uncertainty and volume uncertainty are independent, order quantity becomes the main decision over the interval of the primary selling season. Finally, we demonstrate that the results from the two-season case can be directly extended to the multi-season case and the limited resource multiple-item case