The capacity of developing economies to narrow the gap in living standards with the OECD nations depends critically on their ability to imitate and innovate new technologies. Toward this end, developing economies have access to three avenues of technological advance: technology transfer,...

This paper uses a survey of 1,826 firms distributed over ten East Asian metropolitan areas – Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Seoul, and five Chinese cities – to investigate the sources of firm-level R&D capabilities. The analysis identifies the impact of 23 survey variables, classified by...

During the 1980s, the restructuring of Chinese industry was driven principally by the entry of new enterprises into the enterprise system and by the restructuring of managerial incentives. In 1993, China’s leadership formally inaugurated the shareholding experiment. This paper examines the...

This paper uses a survey of 1,826 firms distributed over ten East Asian metropolitan areas – Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Seoul, and five Chinese cities – to investigate the sources of firm-level R&D capabilities. The analysis identifies the impact of 23 survey variables, classified by...

The reform of China's enterprise system increasingly reflects the outcome of China's emerging property rights market. We distinguish between a centrally-directed reform strategy, with characteristics similar to those of a Pigouvian tax, and a market-driven reform process, which captures the...

This paper characterizes a key feature of the classic socialist economy and state-owned enterprise, namely that of missing markets in labor quality. Under the socialist regime in which students and workers were assigned to work units, the rights of managers to monitor and reward workers were...

During the 1980s, the restructuring of Chinese industry was driven principally by the entry of new enterprises into the enterprise system and by the restructuring of managerial incentives. In 1993, China’s leadership formally inaugurated the shareholding experiment. This paper examines the...

A central objective of economic reform is to reduce the productive inefficiency that arose under regimes in which markets and material incentives played a limited role. Applying an approach for measuring gains in productive efficiency, the authors evaluate the progress between 1980 and 1989...

The neoclassical model argues that environmental regulations impede industrial performance. In this paper, we shed light on two features of environmental regulations in developing countries that have received little attention and that give rise to unexpected outcomes with respect to industry...

During the 1980s and early half of the 1990s, the entry of new firms, the strengthening of managerial incentives, and the accumulation of non-state assets in the state sector set the stage for China's shareholding experiment, involving the formal conversion of thousands of state-owned...