Political cycles represent a core issue for capital markets in developing and emerging countries. This paper analyses the intricate links between financial markets and emerging democracies and highlights changes in the ways analysts and investors...

Informal employment is one of the key features of the Romanian labour market and the main concerns of the Romanian government. Informal employment is not new in Romania. This study attempts to shed light on the issue of informal work in Romania.

Strong growth in China and India has led to improvements in raw-material exporting countries' terms of trade and attracted complementary finance. The long-term challenge for these countries, where institutions are often fragile, is to avoid the...

One of the particular features of poor countries’ economies is their volatility, due mostly to their dependence on commodities. The paper shows that this volatility is a prime factor behind the debt crises of the poorest countries. It advocates the...

Over recent years, a number of emerging creditors have increased their aid and lending to Africa’s Low-Income Countries (LICs). This has fed worries that new official lenders may be undoing years of international efforts to rein in over-indebtedness...

This paper examines the relationship between household structures, the institutions that shape them and physical and human capital accumulation using household and individual data from China, Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Household structures...

This paper provides a fresh look at informal employment, a phenomenon of renewed interest to policy makers and researchers alike. It finds that informal employment is likely to stay, is sometimes a voluntary choice, can offer better working...

The southern Mediterranean region faces one of the most important water crises in the world. The combination of aridity, foreign dependency, climate change, misallocation of the resources and escalating human demand make water supply a primary issue...

This paper analyses the effect of fiscal decentralisation on health outcomes in China using a panel data set with nationwide county-level data. We find that counties in more fiscally decentralised provinces have lower infant mortality rates than...

Over the past decade we have witnessed a double convergence. Aid donors have developed a growing interest in the private sector while private banks have set about creating corporate social responsibility programs, sustainable lending and microfinance...

The emergence of a “second wave” of developing-country multinational enterprises (MNEs) in a variety of industries is one of the characterizing features of globalisation. These new MNEs did not delay their internationalisation until they were large,...

This paper builds on a new database (PRIVMEDA) in order to assess the progress of the privatisation process in the MEDA countries of Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey. The first part of the paper...

The forces shaping the revolution in banking and capital markets have radically changed the financial landscape during the past three decades. A remarkable feature of this changing new landscape has been the astonishing rate of internationalisation...

Private capital movements have risen in recent decades, and bank flows have been part of this story. Some empirical studies have analysed the political drivers of private international liquidity, but paradoxically very few have looked at the...

The paper addresses two core questions: do investment banks’ recommendations have an impact on the allocation of portfolio flows in the emerging-markets asset class? Above all, are these recommendations related to the business of investment banks? In...

Large Western corporations have long invested overseas to penetrate markets, seek resources, and increase efficiency. After the explosion of inward FDI to the South in the 1990s, it is now the turn of the largest companies from emerging and...

The paper focuses on relations between experts and politicians in Latin America. It is divided into three parts. The first outlines the distinctive features of the political economy of expertise in Latin America. This provides the context to the...

This study shows a new approach concerning the concept of family in developing countries. This new approach notably takes into account numerous family related constraints placed upon members of a household. This allows us to analyse more effectively...

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical overview of the relationships among trade, aid and FDI, both in terms of policy interactions and interactions among resource flows. Aid flows from one country to another can have positive or negative...

Increasing the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to developing countries is a cornerstone of new international development commitments. Accordingly, this paper reviews the state of knowledge regarding i) the factors that lead firms to build a...