The determinants of corruption in transition economies

This paper examines the determinants of corruption in transition economies. We found that the progress of structural reform, comprising marketization, rule of law, and democratization had a crucial impact on the extent of corruption control in former socialist countries.     

Policy and trade issues for a future regional biofuels market in Southern Africa

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the domestic political and legislative context surround biofuels initiatives to highlight what opportunities exist for establishing a biofuels trade network between South Africa (as an anchor market) and its neighbours, specifically in Zambia and Mozambique. By analysing global developments in major biofuel importers, reasons for policy inertia in South Africa, and recent experiences with biofuels investments, we suggest that the likelihood for a regional biofuels market developing is slender without addressing land-related challenges in producer countries and revising South Africa’s domestic legislation.     

URBANIZATION, URBAN CONCENTRATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

An international comparative study of the relations among the process of urbanization, urban concentration and economic development, and income distribution was performed by using data of developing and developed countries. Cross-section analyses at certain time periods for capturing "long-run" effects as well as time-series analyses for some countries for "short-run" effects were done taking advantage of the "rectangular" array of data. There were several interesting results: the pattern of unemployment rate in most developing countries shows an inverted-U shaped curve with respect to the degree of urbanization; the pattern of urban concentration is in the form of an inverted-U with respect to the economic development level; and the degree of inequality of income distribution seems to react in an inverted-U form to the variances in the extent of urbanization.     

Turning the other cheek: Facial orientation influences both model attractiveness and product evaluation

The layout of visual elements in advertising influences consumers' perception and judgments. The research reported here investigates the influence of the face orientation of a human model on the perception of their attractiveness and its downstream consequences on product evaluation. Across five experiments, we first demonstrate that consumers tend to perceive a model's face showing his or her left cheek as more attractive than when showing the right cheek, even when the images are otherwise identical. More importantly, we demonstrate the downstream influence of face orientation on the evaluation of advertised products whereby the leftward (vs. rightward) model's face increases the evaluation of the advertised product through perceived model attractiveness. We identify the underlying mechanism of the face orientation effect, namely, that consumers perceive those faces showing their left (vs. right) cheek as more prototypical, and that this perception of prototypicality elicits an aesthetic preference for the model's leftward face which in turn carries over to influence product evaluation. The theoretical and practical implications of this research are also discussed.     

RADICALISM VERSUS GRADUALISM: AN ANALYTICAL SURVEY OF THE TRANSITION STRATEGY DEBATE

Academic debate on a transition strategy for former socialist economies continues even a quarter century after the collapse of the communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In this paper, through an analytical survey of 137 preceding studies, we present an overall picture of the debate and examine the relationship between the debate attitudes and the literature attributes in related studies. We found that the radicalists maintain a consistent debate attitude from the viewpoints of time speed and policy sequence of economic transition, while the debate attitude of the gradualists is more diversified. We also found that there is another group of researchers that stays within the framework of the radicalism‐versus‐gradualism debate while at the same time keeping at arm's length from both the radicalists and the gradualists. In addition, our regression estimation of qualitative selection models provides interesting findings on the relationship between the debate attitudes and the literature attributes.