In 2009 a new law on German debt brakes was passed: state governments are not allowed to run structural deficits after 2020. Consolidation strategies initiated today influence if a state can comply with the debt brake in 2020. We describe to what extent government ideology predicts if state...

This paper benchmarks the performance of OECD rural regions with other types of OECD regions over the period 1995-2010. OECD regions are classified into three types according to the OECD regional typology and into four types according to the extended OECD typology. The latter classifies rural...

Using data from a quick survey of various rural (RFIs) and microfinance institutions (MFIs) in East Asia, the paper tries to find out those institutions and their clientele have been affected by the global financial crisis, how they have coped with the on-going crisis and what they plan to do in...