The WTO and Economic Development

Ben Zissimos (University of Exeter Business School) My new edited volume tilted The WTO and Economic Development, brings together a collection of perspectives on different aspects of the purpose and institutional design of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and how these relate to economic development.[1]  The perspectives are contributed by a group of leading scholars in the […]

(When) Do Anti-poverty Programs Reduce Violence? India’s Rural Employment Guarantee and Maoist Conflict

Aditya Dasgupta (University of California, Merced), Kishore Gawande (University of Texas, Austin), and Devesh Kapur (Johns Hopkins University – SAIS) More than half of all nations have experienced a violent civil conflict since 1960.[1] One of the best predictors of conflict outbreak in a country is a low level of economic development and whether it […]

Heterogeneous Effects of Economic Integration Agreements

By Scott L. Baier (Clemson University), Jeffrey H. Bergstrand (University of Notre Dame), and Matthew W. Clance (University of Pretoria) It is now widely accepted that economic integration agreements (EIAs) and other trade-policy liberalizations contribute to nations’ economic growth and development. EIAs have proliferated among North-North (N-N), North-South (N-S), and South-South (S-S) country-pairs. While such agreements inevitably alter […]

Community-Based Action to Fight Corruption

By Avinash Dixit (Princeton University) How should a country fight corruption? Most people would answer that the government should make and enforce strong laws against it. But further thinking should show that this approach won’t get far. The politicians who make laws, and the officials who enforce them, all stand to benefit from the prevailing […]

Institutional and Organizational Analysis: Concepts and Applications

By Eric Alston (University of Colorado Boulder), Lee Alston (Indiana University Bloomington), Bernardo Mueller (University of Brasilia), and Tomas Nonnenmacher (Allegheny College, Pennsylvania) Today, the notion that “institutions matter” is broadly accepted.  Scholars have generated a rich literature on the causes and effects of institutions spanning from the micro to the macro level. The pioneering […]

Protection in Government Procurement Auctions

By Matthew T. Cole (California Polytechnic State University), Ronald B. Davies (University College Dublin), and Todd Kaplan (University of Exeter Business School and University of Haifa) Government procurement contracts are a large part of many economies, often accounting for 15-20% of GDP.[1] Given the significant size of these contracts and their public-sector nature, it is unsurprising that there […]

Special Issue "New Institutional Economics"

Special Issue Information Dear Colleagues, It has been twenty years since Ronald Coase claimed, in the proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, that “When the majority of economists have changed, mainstream economists will acknowledge the importance of examining the economic system in the way [of new institutional economics] and will claim […]

Export Competitiveness of Developing Countries and US Trade Policy

By Shushanik Hakobyan[1] (International Monetary Fund) With rising US trade protectionism against its major trading partners, the Generalized System of Preferences or GSP, a long-running scheme of tariff exemptions meant to aid exporters in developing countries, may get less attention. While GSP imports account for about one percent of total US imports, they account for about […]

Summary of the 5th InsTED Workshop at Syracuse University

We would like to thank The Department of Economics and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, for hosting and sponsoring the 5th InsTED Workshop.  We are also grateful for sponsorship and organizational support from the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, as well as sponsorship from the Program for the Advancement of […]

Firm Productivity Differences from Factor Markets: New Evidence from China

By Wenya Cheng (University of Glasgow) and John Morrow (Birkbeck, University of London) Although firms may face radically different production conditions, this dimension of firm heterogeneity is often overlooked. A number of studies document large and persistent differences in productivity across both countries and firms.[1] However, these differences remain largely ‘some sort of measure of […]