Summary Effective state-business relations are a set of highly institutionalised, responsive and public interactions between the state and the business sector. This paper examines the impact of effective state-business relations on economic growth across Indian states over the period 1985-2006....

Summary We examine the role of informal and formal institutions behind the growth of private sector in Vietnam since the official recognition of private enterprises in the early 1990s. We show that firms have increasingly taken on risks in their transactions in spite of weak formal institutions....

We argue that an understanding of the political drivers of economic growth needs an explanation of the political dynamics around the transition from one growth phase to another, and that the political drivers of early stage growth accelerations are different from that of growth maintenance....

Summary The paper examines the revenue effects of certified organic contract farming for smallholders and of adoption of organic agricultural farming methods in a tropical African context. The comparison in both cases is with farming systems that are "organic by default." Survey data from a...

What determines how much foreign aid donors provide? Existing answers to this question point to a complex range of influences. However, the tasks of distinguishing between long- and short-run factors, as well as differences between donors, have not been adequately addressed. Taking advantage of...

This paper confirms recent evidence of a positive impact of aid on growth and widens the scope of evaluation to a range of outcomes including proximate sources of growth (e.g., physical and human capital), indicators of social welfare (e.g., poverty and infant mortality), and measures of...