Incentives, Choice, and Accountability in the Provision of Public Services

This paper discusses a theoretical framework to study the issuesof competition and incentives without relying on the standardprofit-oriented ‘market’ model in the context ofthe debates about public-service reform in the UK. It uses theidea that the production of public services coheres around amission, and discusses how decentralized service provision canraise productivity by matching motivated workers to their preferredmissions. Our focus on competition and incentives cuts acrosstraditional debates about public versus private ownership andallows for the possibility of involving private non-profit organizations.We also address concerns about the consequences of allowingmore flexibility in mission design and competition on inequality.     

Financial liberalization: The case of Sri Lanka

Empirical Economics - According to the advocates of financial liberalization in less developed countries (LDCs), a rise in the real interest rates is essential to stimulate savings, investment and...     

Linkages and Industrial Policy for Eastern Europe

It is argued that insustrial policy for Eastern Europe is needed in order to reduce the social cost of transition. The industrial policy suggestes is based on unbalanced growth focused on key sectors that, according to linkage analysis, influence the economy more than other sector. An attempt should be made to increase efficency in key sectors, either by new investment or by closing down inefficient enterprises. This strategy could be adopted temporarily, gradually to move away from the existing structure of the economy rather than to reinforce it. In order to illustrate the potential of such an industrial policy, a sector-specific approach has been simulated for Poland using a compuable general equilibuium (CGE) model. The simulation results have shown that macroenonomic performance, measured by output, employment and funds available for invesment, is much better when industrial policy has been concentrated on a key sector.     

Land reform and agricultural productivity in India: a review of the evidence

In this paper we review as well as contribute to the empiricalliterature on the impact of land reform on agricultural productivityin India. We find that, overall for all states, land-reformlegislation had a negative and significant effect on agriculturalproductivity. However, this hides considerable variation acrosstypes of land reform, as well as variation across states. Decomposingby type of land reform, the main driver for this negative effectseems to be land-ceiling legislation. In contrast, the effectof tenancy reform, averaged across all states, is insignificant.There seems to be a wide range of state-specific effects, whichsuggests that focusing on average treatment effects can hidea considerable amount of heterogeneity. In particular, allowinga separate slope for West Bengal, one of the few states thatimplemented tenancy laws rigorously, we find that land reformhad a marginal positive effect relative to the rest of India.     

关于推动农村邮政物流发展的意见

本文指出在满足非洲地区的医疗卫生需求方面，私营部门发挥了重要作用，私营部门在提供医疗卫生服务方面存在明显优势。未来10年，提供医疗卫生服务的项目将占撒哈拉以南的非洲大部分地区总投资机遇的一半，其余投资机遇将分布在分销和零售、生命科学、风险共担和医科教育领域。     

Monetary Policy Rules for Transition Economies: An Empirical Analysis

In this paper, we investigate the monetary policy reaction functions for the new European Union member states. We find interesting differences when looking at both interest rates (the Taylor rule) and monetary base (the McCallum rule) as monetary policy rules. Monetary aggregate is more likely to react to the deviation of inflation from its target, while short‐term interest rates are highly sensitive to the deviation of exchange rates in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. For Hungary and Romania, both interest rates and money are responsive to inflation. In empirical literature, much attention is paid to the use of the Taylor‐type rule for developed economies. However, our empirical results raise questions on the reliance of this rule for these transition economies.