Financial sector innovation and development has been an integral part of the rise of capitalism over the last half millennium. The innovations of the last three decades of the twentieth century were a continuation of the trend; they contributed to an era of global prosperity, but also increased...

Recent literature has focussed on institutional degradation and revenue volatility as major sources of a resource curse. Formerly centrally planned countries may be especially vulnerable due to their mutating institutions and macropolicy inexperience. This paper examines these issues through...

Sport mega-events such as the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup, or on a smaller scale the Commonwealth Games or regional events, attract competing bids from nations or cities. These bids are mostly made at tax-payers? expense and spending is often large and non-transparent. Our paper addresses...

Preferential tariff rates are often not utilized by qualified beneficiaries. Two reasons are complex rules of origin and erosion of preference margins as a result of multilateral trade liberalization. Our paper contributes to this research by providing evidence from high-quality disaggregated...

The Asia Pacific region was characterized in the second half of the twentieth century by an absence of regional trading arrangements. The situations changed after 2000, raising questions of sequencing and of the boundaries of the region. This paper argues that the proliferation of regional and...

After becoming independent in 1991, the five Central Asian countries pursued differing transition paths from the defunct central planning. This paper analyses the connection between economic policies and performance during the 1990s and 2000s. Performance over the two decades has been determined...

This paper assesses the poverty situation in the Kyrgyz Republic in September/October 1993. One aim is to provide guidelines for the creation of a social safety net by identifying the characteristics of the most economically vulnerable groups on the eve of transition to a market-based economy....

The paper analyses the nature and effects of agrarian reform in Uzbekistan. Since becoming independent in late 1991, Uzbekistan has followed a gradual reform path, often invoking the Chinese model. Agrarian reform has resembled China's post-1978 household responsibility system, but has failed to...