2008, Vol.17, No.2

Journal of Regional Studies and Development 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.4

pISSN : 1738-3846 / eISSN : 2765-4028
https://journal.kci.go.kr/jrsd_ipaid

This paper analyzes the relationship among institutions and economic growth. Based on a review of the current literature on institutional analysis, in particular that related with New Institutional Economics (NIE), we identify and propose a means of integrating additional factors that need to be assessed. In our review, we focus on those studies that emphasize property and contractual rights as being the main explicative variables of economic growth. The principal hypothesis of this current of thought is that liberal (democratic) and market institutions are a prerequisite for encouraging investment, efficiency, innovation, employment, and consequently, economic growth. Latin America developing countries in terms of economic growth. Our results suggest that path dependence variables are as important as the variables traditionally set forth in the literature on NIE. Although our investigation is still in its infancy, in publishing this article we seek to complement NIE’s institutional analysis through introducing variables that are more realistic, complex and useful than the rather simplistic relationships between institutions and economic growth that NIE has heretofore proposed

Is anti-corruption important to public administration reform? Or is public administration reform important for the fight against corruption? How are anti-corruption and public administration reform inter-linked? How can public administration reform areas be prioritized in order to push up anti-corruption agenda? How to prioritize and sequence reform/strategies in these two broad and complex policy areas? This paper aims to provide initial approximations on how to answer these questions. Considering corruption as a symptom of outcomes of unresolved governance and public administration, this paper argues that public administration reform and anti-corruption cannot be treated as separate processes on their own. The paper discusses the importance of data collection and highlights how some APEC economies have managed to improve both public administration and anti-corruption by way of collecting data. In addition, the fight against corruption does not happen in a vacuum and needs to be tailored down to country specifics. Therefore while public administration reform and anti-corruption are mutually reinforcing each other, attention should be paid to levels and degrees.

This article deals with municipal amalgamations. Amalgamations seem to be a widely used method to reform territorial structure across Europe. The existing literature, however, does not strongly support the common motives for amalgamations. Big is not always beautiful, and public services differ in terms of the optimal organizational structure. In Finland, after several decades of voluntary-based amalgamations, the government decided in 2005 to launch a comprehensive reform of the local government system. All municipalities were required to rearrange their structure so that health and vocational education services would be provided to a wider population. The government encouraged municipalities to amalgamate, but inter-municipal cooperation was allowed as well. At the beginning of 2009, about one fifth of Finnish municipalities will amalgamate with another, and a majority of all municipalities will decide to engage in cooperation with other municipalities. The article examines this process in detail.