THE CHANGING ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT UNDER A DECENTRALIZED STATE: The case of the Philippines

This paper discusses the evolving role of local government in the Philippines under an environment of local autonomy and decentralized structures. With the passage of the Local Government Code by Congress in 1991 which devolved powers and authority to local governments, they were given wide latitude to make vital decisions in governing their local communities. Thus, they were enabled and expected to assume new and wider roles in local governance through innovation and changes in the local structures, though with limited resources. Within this changing context, this paper presents and discusses some issues and concerns which beset the implementation of their enabling role. It also presents two documented case studies which illustrate the shifting of roles of local governments from that of a traditional bureaucratic enabler to a market-oriented or community-oriented enabler.     

Catch-up and fall-back through innovation and imitation

Will fast growing emerging economies sustain rapid growth rates until they “catch-up” to the technology frontier? Are there incentives for some developed countries to free-ride off of innovators and optimally “fall-back” relative to the frontier? This paper models agents growing as a result of investments in innovation and imitation. Imitation facilitates technology diffusion, with the productivity of imitation modeled by a catch-up function that increases with distance to the frontier. The resulting equilibrium is an endogenous segmentation between innovators and imitators, where imitating agents optimally choose to “catch-up” or “fall-back” to a productivity ratio below the frontier.     

Corporations as Political Actors – A Report on the First Swiss Master Class in Corporate Social Responsibility

This paper presents a report on the first Swiss Master Class in Corporate Social Responsibility, which was held between the 8th and 9th December 2006 at HEC Lausanne in Switzerland. The first section of the report introduces the topic of the master class – ?Corporations as Political Actors – Facing the Postnational Challenge’ – as well as the concept of the master class. The second section gives an overview of papers written by nine young scholars that were selected to present their research. The brief summary of each paper also includes a summary of comments from the masters, practitioners, and NGO representatives at the event. The third section brings in the perspectives of one master and one NGO representative on the discussed issues. The final section offers a brief wrap-up of the discussed topics and outlines ways to structure future conceptual and empirical research.     

Local Currency Bond Market Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Stock-Taking Exercise and Analysis of Key Drivers

This article studies the current state and drivers of government local currency bond market (LCBM) development in Sub-Saharan Africa. We first show that, increasingly, African governments issue fixed-rate local currency bonds with tenors of ten years and more on a regular basis. However, African LCBMs are also often marked by illiquidity, very few corporate securities, and narrow, bank-dominated investor bases. Second, we present an econometric analysis of the drivers of African government LCBMs based on a new high-quality, OECD-compiled panel dataset. LCBM capitalization is found to be correlated negatively with governments’ fiscal balance and inflation, and positively with common law legal origins, institutional quality and democracy.