Economics of Transition and Institutional Change最新文献

{"title":"Corruption and Leadership in Africa: Evidence From Burkina Faso","authors":"Harouna Sedgo","doi":"10.1111/ecot.70007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.70007","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study assesses the role of a leader in anticorruption fighting in Africa. It focuses on the rule of Thomas Sankara, one of the legendary figures of contemporary Africa. Using the synthetic control approach, we design a counterfactual for the actual Burkina Faso called synthetic Burkina Faso based on corruption before Sankara's tenure. The difference between Burkina Faso and synthetic Burkina Faso highlights that the leadership of Thomas Sankara had a substantial effect in reducing corruption in Burkina Faso, during his tenure, over the period 1983–1987. This reduction effect in 1987 was as much as 70 per cent of the 1982 level of corruption in the country. This result is robust to placebo tests. This finding highlights the leader's importance in shaping African countries' institutional trajectory. To fight corruption, having an exemplary leader is a cure.</p>","PeriodicalId":40265,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Transition and Institutional Change","volume":"34 1","pages":"183-197"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecot.70007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145779414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Foreign Debt and Economic Growth: The Role of Institutional Quality and Financial Development in Asian Developing Countries","authors":"Muhammad Dawood,&nbsp;Zhao Rui Feng,&nbsp;Mingxing Li,&nbsp;Fayaz Hussain Tunio,&nbsp;Noah Cheruiyot Mutai,&nbsp;Zhong Hua Li","doi":"10.1111/ecot.70005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.70005","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>The dual role of foreign debt as both a stimulus for growth and a driver of fiscal fragility remains a critical challenge for developing economies. Although existing literature emphasises static debt-to-GDP thresholds, this study contributes to a paradigm shift by examining how institutional quality (IQ) and financial development (FD) dynamically moderate the debt–growth nexus across 32 developing Asian countries (1997–2022). Employing advanced second-generation econometric techniques, system GMM, dynamic common correlated effects (DCCE) and dynamic panel threshold models (DPTM), we address the issues of endogeneity, cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity that have been pervasive in prior studies. Results reveal that foreign debt exerts a baseline adverse effect on economic growth, consistent with the debt overhang hypothesis. However, strong institutional structures and developed financial systems reduce these adverse effects, enabling debt to act as an impetus for growth beyond the identified thresholds. For the full sample, institutional quality and financial development thresholds are 0.93 (on a −2.5 to +2.5 scale) and 38.35% (on a 0 to 100 scale) of GDP, respectively. Disaggregated analyses show that lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) benefit at thresholds of 0.91 (IQ) and 37.33% (FD), whereas upper-middle-income countries (UMICs) require stricter thresholds of 0.85 (IQ) and 55.94% (FD) to leverage debt for innovation-driven growth. These findings challenge the universality of debt-to-GDP ‘danger zones’, emphasising context-dependent thresholds shaped by governance and financial maturity. This study underscores that institutional reforms—such as enhancing transparency, strengthening the rule of law, improving fiscal accountability, deepening financial systems and advancing credit allocation and risk intermediation—are essential prerequisites for the sustainable utilisation of external debt. By bridging institutional economics and debt sustainability frameworks, this work offers policymakers actionable benchmarks to navigate debt's dual role as a developmental tool and fiscal liability in emerging Asia.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":40265,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Transition and Institutional Change","volume":"34 1","pages":"161-182"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145772600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unlocking Rural Entrepreneurship Through Rural Land Mortgage: Evidence From an Institutional Reform in China","authors":"Zhanyu Dong,&nbsp;Zijia Chen,&nbsp;Junyou Chen,&nbsp;Guangjun Shen","doi":"10.1111/ecot.70006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.70006","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper examines the impact of rural land reform on rural entrepreneurship, focusing on China's pilot programme for rural land mortgage loans (RLML), which enables rural households to use their land management rights as collateral for financing. Using a unique dataset of newly registered rural businesses from 2011 to 2018, we employ a difference-in-differences approach refined with a ‘selection on observables’ framework. Results show that the RLML pilot significantly increased rural business creation, with a 10% higher growth in pilot counties compared to nonpilot counties. These findings are robust to various checks. Mechanism analysis suggests that the pilot promotes entrepreneurship mainly by easing financial constraints and improving rural infrastructure. However, the effects are localised, with no spillovers to urban areas or migration destinations. The pilot mainly encourages small-scale service businesses rather than large enterprises, reflecting land fragmentation constraints. Stronger rural financial systems, supportive policies and a more developed service sector further enhance the pilot's impact on rural entrepreneurship.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":40265,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Transition and Institutional Change","volume":"34 1","pages":"137-160"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145779346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Selective Industrial Policy and Innovation Efficiency in Chinese Listed Companies","authors":"Xiulu Huang,&nbsp;Rui Zhu","doi":"10.1111/ecot.70004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.70004","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>For a long time, selective industrial policy has been widely used by governments around the world as a key tool for economic intervention. But how do these policies affect corporate innovation efficiency? This paper examines the Ten Industry Revitalisation Plan (TIRP), an emergency policy response by the Chinese government to the global economic downturn of 2008, treating it as an exogenous shock. The empirical analysis shows that the TIRP significantly reduced innovation efficiency, with this effect proving persistent even after the policy period ended. Mechanism analysis reveals that the policy decreased treated firm innovation efficiency by increasing government subsidies, impairing investment efficiency and exacerbating capital misallocation. Further investigation indicates that the TIRP has a stronger pushing-up effect on the innovative capital input of firms state-owned and firms with low productivity and diverts innovation resources to less productive or innovative firms, yielding nonachievement of the expected innovation outcomes. This study concludes that selective industrial policy poses a significant barrier to improving innovation efficiency, offering valuable insights for enhancing economic innovation performance.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":40265,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Transition and Institutional Change","volume":"34 1","pages":"117-136"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145772397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Long-Run Convergence Trends in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations","authors":"Chang Yee Kwan,&nbsp;Issam Malki","doi":"10.1111/ecot.70001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.70001","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines income convergence among the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for the period 1970–2019, spanning the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015. We employ the novel log <i>t</i> test developed by Phillips and Sul which is robust to heterogeneity and nonlinearity in the data. Our study uniquely analyses convergence using both per capita income and national GDP aggregates. We find evidence of an ongoing process of convergence in GDP per capita among ASEAN members, with convergence rates ranging from 0.003% to 0.22% annually. However, our analysis of national GDP aggregates reveals potential divergence and the emergence of a ‘two-tier ASEAN’. We attribute the slow convergence to insufficient capital accumulation and technological progress across member states. Our findings highlight the complex dynamics of economic integration in ASEAN and underscore the need for targeted policies to promote inclusive growth and prevent the formation of a two-tier economic structure within the bloc. This research contributes to the literature on regional economic integration and provides valuable insights for policymakers in ASEAN and other regional economic communities.</p>","PeriodicalId":40265,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Transition and Institutional Change","volume":"34 1","pages":"101-115"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecot.70001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145779608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Healing or Harming? Unveiling the Dual Impact of IMF Reforms on Child Health Outcomes in Developing Nations","authors":"Michael Chletsos,&nbsp;Nikolaos Mylonidis,&nbsp;Andreas Sintos","doi":"10.1111/ecot.70003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.70003","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We provide new insights regarding the impact of IMF programme participation and imposed policy reforms on child mortality rates using a sample of developing countries from 2000 to 2013. To account for the selection bias related to both IMF participation and conditionality, we employ a recently developed compound instrumental variables methodology. Using annual data, we show that IMF programme participation and state-owned enterprise (SOE) privatisation conditions improve recipient countries' child mortality rates, whereas all other conditions exert an adverse effect on child mortality rates. These novel findings highlight the heterogeneous effect of IMF conditionalities and document that mandated policy reforms aimed at alleviating mismanagement and inefficiencies in SOEs can actually lead to lower child mortality rates. More generally, our results suggest that the IMF's focus on specific structural reforms, rather than on widening the scope of conditionality, is likely to yield better public health outcomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":40265,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Transition and Institutional Change","volume":"34 1","pages":"87-100"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecot.70003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145772438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Do Growth Accelerations Help Economies Escape From Low-Growth Traps? Evidence From Indian States","authors":"Sabyasachi Kar,&nbsp;Debajit Jha","doi":"10.1111/ecot.12455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.12455","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Developing economies are frequently caught in low-growth traps. This paper attempts to test whether a significant growth up-break, known popularly in the literature as growth accelerations, can enable them to break out of such traps. A three-step process is adopted to test this hypothesis. The first step involves identifying economies caught in low-growth traps using the convergence club framework. The second step identifies all growth transitions, that is, growth accelerations and slowdowns, exhibited by these economies. The third step investigates whether having a growth acceleration is positively correlated with converging to a higher-performing growth club, controlling for initial conditions and growth slowdowns. Using this three-step process and using data from subnational regions of India, we next test our hypothesis. Our results show that growth accelerations have indeed played a significant role in club formation in India, enabling subnational regions with such accelerations to break into higher-growth convergence clubs. Finally, drawing on the growth transition literature, our analysis suggests policy strategies for low-growth economies that can help them to ignite growth accelerations and escape to higher-performing clubs.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":40265,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Transition and Institutional Change","volume":"34 1","pages":"73-86"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145779440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Closure of the Non-Bank Microfinance Sector in Uzbekistan: Who Is Affected and by How Much?","authors":"Nargiza Alimukhamedova,&nbsp;Nurmukhammad Yusupov","doi":"10.1111/ecot.12452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.12452","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Studies of the impact of access to microfinance almost exclusively focus on assessing the microeconomic effects of the entry of microfinance institutions. We measure the effect of the 2011 closure of the entire nonbank microfinance sector in Uzbekistan. Using two waves of a unique household survey, we estimate the impact on four business (size of business, log of business profit, business ownership of respondent and log of business assets) and four household consumption (log of monthly household expenditures per capita, log of monthly household income per capita, log of household assets per capita, log of spending on housing per capita) outcomes using a modified difference-in-difference approach. We find that it is mostly the borrowers who are in the middle of the wealth distribution that were affected by the closure, in contrast to prevailing claims in the literature pointing to ultra-poor borrowers. We also document the heterogeneity of the impact affecting mainly borrowers with vocational and higher education, households with medium-level wealth and the self-employed. Some of our key results are in contrast with existing literature. Given that access to finance is vital for low-income households and that microfinance crises adversely affect both borrowers and nonborrowers, we argue it is important to focus on the diagnostics and prevention of potential future crises in the sector.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":40265,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Transition and Institutional Change","volume":"34 1","pages":"45-71"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145779561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Piecemeal Labour Market Liberalisation and Entrepreneurship in China's Transition","authors":"Ziyan Yang,&nbsp;Jiakun Ma","doi":"10.1111/ecot.12454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.12454","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Existing studies argue that China's dual-track approach to economic reforms offers lessons for other transition economies. Ignoring the piecemeal nature of the track-merging process, the literature has not supported this theory empirically. We identify the impacts of China's piecemeal unification of the dual-track job-assignment system on entrepreneurship, arriving at three conclusions. First, the partial unification of the system has played as important a role as full unification in relaxing constraints on college graduates' entrepreneurship incentives. Second, the system encourages college graduates to take planned-track jobs first and then traps them on the planned track through career-path dependence, explaining the mechanism. Third, with respect to the three types of planned-track jobs, the piecemeal merging completely eliminates bias towards college graduates associated with jobs in state-owned enterprises and weakens their career-path dependence while only partially correcting for bias associated with government and institute jobs without affecting career-path dependence in those cases.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":40265,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Transition and Institutional Change","volume":"34 1","pages":"23-43"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145772352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"China's Polluting Interregnum: Evidence From Power Vacancy of Local Leaders","authors":"Jianglong Li,&nbsp;Xiaoming Ma","doi":"10.1111/ecot.12456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.12456","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Power vacancies in local government leadership positions may have significant implications for the implementation and regulation of air pollution control policies. Using data from 271 prefecture-level cities in China from 2014 to 2017, we examine the causal effects of power vacancies on the effectiveness of air pollution control. The findings indicate that power vacancies, particularly the absence of party secretaries, have a substantial negative impact on the effectiveness of air pollution control efforts. Specifically, a 1-month vacancy in the party secretary position leads to a 0.572-unit decrease in the completion of air pollution control objectives. Furthermore, the underlying mechanisms show that the absence of a party secretary disrupts the balance of authority and accountability among local officials, leading to diminished efforts in executing environmental protection policies. In this scenario, local officials, driven by economic incentives, are more likely to approve high-polluting industrial registrations and relax pollution restrictions, which directly results in a 2.6% increase in the number of new high-polluting industrial enterprises and a 1% rise in NO₂ concentrations. This impact is more pronounced in regions with lower levels of economic development, weaker public environmental awareness and less developed marketisation.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":40265,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Transition and Institutional Change","volume":"34 1","pages":"3-21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145779345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}