Unproductive enterprises that feed on productive businesses, are rampant in developing countries. A consequence of parasitic enterprises is that societies may be locked into a self enforcing configuration of beliefs and practices that result in persistent poverty. When entrepreneurs of both...

Civil society has been calling for improvement in Local Government for sometime now, primarily because of the ineffectiveness of the KSAC and Parish Councils island-wide to provide services such as, roads repair and public lighting, amongst others. Due to a lack of voter participation, however,...

This article provides a detailed critical analysis of the economic policy implemented by the Algerian Governments between 1999 and 2002 (under the presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika), of its results, and of the advance of their structural reforms program. In this context, the social base of...

In this paper the practicability of a free trade area has been examined. The classical Viner’s trade creation and trade diversion effects have been considered, and although they refer to a static analysis it can be shown that they still may lead to important conclusions in terms of welfare and...

The increased use of information and communications technology (ICT) has helped to raise Australia’s productivity growth, according to a new Commission study. It has enabled firms to innovate in what they do and how they do it. ICT Use and Productivity: A Synthesis from Studies of Australian...

Many existing measures of vulnerability lack a theoretical basis. In this paper we propose to measure vulnerability rigorously as the welfare of a household which solves an intertemporal optimisation model under risk.In such models, in essence a stochastic version of the Ramsey model, an...

Genuine saving is an established indicator of weak sustainable development that measures the net level of investment a country makes in produced, natural and human capital less depreciation. Maintaining this net level of investment above zero is a necessary condition for sustainable development....

The paper explores an endogenous growth model in which scale effects asymptotically vanish and an economy grows without population growth. The key mechanism behind these features is substitution between investing in capital and in knowledge when firms face growing uncompensated knowledge...

We study the politico-economic interaction in a country in transition from a communist regime to a democratic, free market system, to wit, Albania. It is argued that the politico-economic system there is characterized by the existence of clans. Both the communists and the first democratically...

The decision to migrate has received substantial attention from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Underlying most analyses is the desire to understand why individuals relocate within their own country, or more drastically, migrate to another country. While there are numerous reasons...