The task of urban managers is to ensure the provision of basic urban services, such as water, waste removal, security, transport, and an environment conducive to economic activity, while maintaining fiscal sustainability of city operations. City managers in developing countries face increasing...

Many development strategies assume (or desperately hope) that a country already has the capacity to plan and implement institutional reform or that such institutional reform can be pushed through with the external pressures of aid and conditionalities. In a decentralized reform strategy,...

The authors investigate whether resident enterprise managers have an informational advantage about the countries in which they work. They propose a method for extracting information available to resident managers but unknown to investors and forecasters. They rest their hypothesis of...

The authors call for a revised model for the regulation of industrial pollution. They think the traditional emphasis on appropriate instruments, while ultimately correct, is premature, because agencies in most developing countries have insufficient information and burdensome transaction costs to...

One of the most contentious debates today is whether pollution-intensive industries from rich countries relocate to poor countries with weaker environmental standards, turning them into pollution havens. Empirical studies to date show little evidence to support the pollution haven hypothesis,...

This paper compares and contrasts Tokyo's innovation structure with the industrial districts model and the international hub model in the literature on urban and regional development. The Tokyo model embraces and yet transcends both industrial districts and international hub models. The paper...

Survey evidence from Mexico reveals large observed differences in pollution from factories in the same industry, or the same area, or operating under the same regulatory regime. Many factories have adopted significant measures for pollution control and are in compliance with environmental...

The author explores the link between information flows and governance or institutional quality. Economic theory expounds on the importance of information on economic outcomes either through its direct effect on prices and quantities or through its effect on other factors such as institutions and...

Governments use a variety of instruments to provide direct support to private enterprises. These include the provision of finance (subsidized and/or directed credit) and business development services (management and marketing advice to small businesses, agricultural extension services, support...

In a globalizing world, cities at or near the apex of the international urban hierarchy are among the favored few--New York, London, and Tokyo--that have acquired large economic, cultural, and symbolic roles. Among a handful of regions that aspire to such a role--such as Hong Kong, Miami, and...