Peri‐urban land tenure: Problems and prospects

Informal settlements in Natal are discussed. The need for and the reasons against informal settlement are examined. Means of overcoming the shortcomings of informal settlement are suggested and the need for security of tenure in order to promote ‘self‐help’ is highlighted.     

The discipline of innovation.

As managers recognize the heightened importance of innovation to competitive success, they face an apparent paradox: the orderly and predictable decisions on which a business rests depend increasingly on the disorderly and unpredictable process of innovation. How can managers expect to plan for--or count on--a process that is itself so utterly dependent on creativity, inspiration, and old-fashioned luck? Drawing on his many years' experience studying innovative and entrepreneurial companies, the author argues that this paradox is apparent only, not real. Most of what happens in successful innovations is not the happy occurrence of a blinding flash of insight but, rather, the careful implementation of an unspectacular but systematic management discipline. At the heart of that discipline lies the knowledge of where to look for innovation opportunities and how to identify them. It is to this study of the sources of innovation that Mr. Drucker here addresses himself.     

A Short History of Price Level Convergence in Europe

We study the evolution of price level dispersion in Europe by combining time-series information on harmonized indices of consumer prices (HICPs) with occasional observations of absolute price levels. We find that European price levels converged over much of the last 40 to 50 years. In the United States, our benchmark, price level dispersion is more or less stable. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that indirect tax rate harmonization, convergence of nontraded input costs, and convergence of traded input costs (in the form of exchange rate stability and increased openness) are all important in explaining European price level convergence.     

Corporate finance and governance in emerging markets: A selective review and an agenda for future research

There are important organizational and behavioral differences between firms in emerging markets and those in developed markets. We propose a top-down approach to understand how key institutional forces shape the structures and policies of firms in emerging markets. We review a selective set of prior studies as well as papers included in this Special Issue in identifying government quality, state ownership, and financial development as critical institutional forces that shape the financing and governance of firms in emerging markets. We suggest that future research should pay attention to several important but unanswered topics related to informal enforcement, government incentives, family firms, and network organizations.