This dissertation investigates the hypothesis that participation can overcome trade-offs in equity and efficiency. Literature within the field of economics and sociology has argued for tradeoffs in outcomes of allocative efficiency and equity and institutional efficiency and equity,...

The dissertation explores the problem of institution-building in nascent capitalist economies, with the emphasis on the role of culture in the genesis of new institutional forms. To help better understand the nature of the post-communist transformation in Russia, I address the questions of...

This dissertation explores the role of efficiency of redistributive institutions (ERI)on redistribution. The first substantive essay proposes a theoretical model to explain thelack of strong empirical evidence in favor of a positive relationship between incomeinequality and redistribution. This...

Performance based budgeting reform in its latest stage continues to evolve after resurgence in popularity resulting from the Clinton Administration's National Performance Review and the international new public management (NPM) movement. Performance based budgeting is sometimes viewed with...

Based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, People's Republic of China, I offer a reading of Reform and Opening (Gaige Kaifang) in terms of how individuals recognized, manipulated, avoided, and responded to the Chinese state apparatus during the Deng...

The three essays cover the economic, political and institutional aspects of the impact drug smuggling activities have had on the Colombian economy. In the first essay, I examine drug smuggling activities as factors of institutional change forcing Colombia to adopt an export-led growth model of...

This study is an attempt to test the hypothesis that outward orientation is favorable for income distribution in labor abundant country. The hypothesis is examined by using data from a cross-section of 34 developing countries. A positive relationship is found between outward orientation and...

The present research was an analysis of cities as social systems, using data for the 148 SMSA's of 200,000 or larger population in 1970. It examines the relationship among variables representative of several theoretical concepts, which are system size, productive output, complexity, growth,...