Creating the Conditions for International Business Expansion: The Impact of Regulation on Economic Growth in Developing Countries - A Cross-Country Analysis

The role of an effective regulatory regime in promoting economic growth and development and therefore international business has generated considerable interest among researchers and practitioners in recent years. In particular, building effective regulatory structures in developing countries is not simply an issue of the technical design of the most appropriate regulatory instruments, it is also concerned with the quality of supporting regulatory institutions and capacity. Many of the institutions that support markets are publicly provided and the effectiveness of these regulatory institutions can be expected to be an important determinant of how well markets function. This paper explores the role of regulation in affecting economic outcomes using an econometric model of the impact of regulatory governance. More precisely, it assesses through econometric modelling the impact of variations in the quality of regulatory governance on economic growth. Proxies for regulatory quality are included as determinants of economic growth. The results based on two different techniques of estimation suggest a strong causal link between regulatory quality and economic performance. The results confirm that "good" regulation is associated with higher economic growth, which in turn is conducive to the expansion of international business.economic growth, regulation, governance, institutions, economic performance, International Development, C23, I18, L33, L51, L98, O38, O50,

Assessing the Effects of Privatisation, Competition and Regulation on Economic Performance: The Case of Electricity Sector Reform

Over the last two decades electricity sectors in both developed and developing countries have been subject to restructuring to introduce private capital and increase competition. This has been accompanied by the introduction of new regulatory regimes. Although the effects of such reforms in a number of the developed economies are now well documented, apart from a few case studies the experience of developing countries is much less well researched. This is important because privatisation, competition and the reform of state regulation are key themes of donor aid programmes, notably those of the World Bank. This paper provides an econometric assessment of the effects of privatisation, competition and regulation on the performance of the electricity generation industry using panel data for 36 developing and transitional countries, over the period 1985 to 2003. The study identifies the impact of these reforms on generating capacity, electricity generated, labour productivity in the generating sector and capacity utilisation. The main conclusions are that on their own privatisation and regulation do not lead to obvious gains in economic performance, though there are some positive interaction effects. By contrast, introducing competition does seem to be effective in stimulating performance improvements.Privatisation, competition, regulation, developing economies, electricity sector.

Infrastructure regulation and poverty reduction in developing countries: a review of the evidence and a research agenda

Poverty reduction is a primary goal of development policy. In large parts of the World people have to live on meagre incomes and have limited access to infrastructure services, such as mains water, safe sanitation, mains power supplies, maintained roads and telephones. In response, more and more infrastructure provision has been opened up to private investment over the last two decades and regulatory institutions have been introduced to protect the public interest in the absence of state ownership. In this paper the role of infrastructure regulation in poverty reduction is investigated drawing on the published evidence. The conclusion is that the evidence is both patchy and sometimes contradictory. There is mixed knowledge regarding the extent to which regulators address poverty issues and about the results of regulatory decisions. The paper concludes by proposing a future research agenda aimed at improving our understanding of the ways in which infrastructure regulation impacts on poverty, with the objective of improving actual regulatory policy in developing economies

On the Age of the Widest Very Low Mass Binary

We have recently identified the widest very low-mass binary (2M0126AB), consisting of an M6.5V and an M8V dwarf with a separation of ~5100 AU, which is twice as large as that of the second widest known system and an order of magnitude larger than those of all other previously known wide very low-mass binaries. If this binary belongs to the field population, its constituents would have masses of ~0.09 Msun, at the lower end of the stellar regime. However, in the discovery paper we pointed out that its proper motion and position in the sky are both consistent with being a member of the young (30 Myr) Tucana/Horologium association, raising the possibility that the binary is a pair of ~0.02 Msun brown dwarfs. We obtained optical spectroscopy at the Gemini South Observatory in order to constrain the age of the pair and clarify its nature. The absence of lithium absorption at 671 nm, modest Halpha emission, and the strength of the gravity-sensitive Na doublet at 818 nm all point toward an age of at least 200 Myr, ruling out the possibility that the binary is a member of Tucana/Horologium. We further estimate that the binary is younger than 2 Gyr based on its expected lifetime in the galactic disk.Comment: accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Stress effects on the Raman spectrum of an amorphous material: theory and experiment on a-Si:H

Strain in a material induces shifts in vibrational frequencies, which is a probe of the nature of the vibrations and interatomic potentials, and can be used to map local stress/strain distributions via Raman microscopy. This method is standard for crystalline silicon devices, but due to lack of calibration relations, it has not been applied to amorphous materials such as hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), a widely studied material for thin-film photovoltaic and electronic devices. We calculated the Raman spectrum of a-Si:H \ab initio under different strains $\epsilon$ and found peak shifts $\Delta \omega = \left( -460 \pm 10\ \mathrm{cm}^{-1} \right) {\rm Tr}\ \epsilon$. This proportionality to the trace of the strain is the general form for isotropic amorphous vibrational modes, as we show by symmetry analysis and explicit computation. We also performed Raman measurements under strain and found a consistent coefficient of $-510 \pm 120\ \mathrm{cm}^{-1}$. These results demonstrate that a reliable calibration for the Raman/strain relation can be achieved even for the broad peaks of an amorphous material, with similar accuracy and precision as for crystalline materials.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures + supplementary 8 pages, 4 figure

Infrastructure Regulation: Models for Developing Asia

The objective of this paper is to review the experience of infrastructure regulation in low and middle income countries, to assess the applicability of this experience to developing Asia, and to identify areas for future research on infrastructure regulation in the low and middle income economies of the Asia region.An essential requirement for economic growth and sustainable development is the provision of efficient, reliable and affordable infrastructure services, such as water and sanitation, power, transport and telecommunications. Traditionally, infrastructure was the exclusive province of the public sector, with large, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) being responsible for investment and service delivery. Typically, the SOE sector was a costly and inefficient provider of infrastructure in most developing countries.1 However, encouraged by international organisations such as the World Bank, privatisation has been a major component of the economic reform programmes pursued by many developing countries over the past two decades (Parker and Kirkpatrick, 2004a). Privatisation was predicted to promote more efficient operations, increase investment and service coverage, and reduce the financial burden on government budgets (World Bank, 1995). Much of the early privatisation activity was concentrated in the manufacturing sector, but recent years have seen donor agencies advocating the privatisation of utility industries in developing countries and the introduction of semi-autonomous, dedicated regulatory bodies for these industries within government (World Bank, 1995,1997). A large number of developing countries have introduced some private participation into their infrastructure industries, especially telecommunications, and to a lesser degree in electricity and water