This book is about the institutions, incentives and constraints that guide the behaviour of people and organizations involved in the implementation of foreign aid programmes. While traditional performance studies tend to focus almost exclusively on the policies and institutions in recipient countries, this book looks at incentives in the entire chain of organizations involved in the delivery of foreign aid, from donor governments and agencies to consultants, experts and other intermediaries. Four aspects of foreign aid delivery are examined in detail: incentives inside donor agencies, the interaction of subcontractors with recipient organizations, incentives inside recipient country institutions, and biases in aid performance monitoring systems.

This book analyzes the institutions--incentives and constraints--that guide the behavior of persons involved in the implementation of aid programs. While traditional performance studies tend to focus almost exclusively on policies and institutions in recipient countries, the authors look at incentives in the entire chain of organizations involved in the delivery of foreign aid, from donor governments and agencies to consultants, experts and other intermediaries. They examine incentives inside donor agencies, the interaction of subcontractors with recipient organizations, incentives inside recipient country institutions, and biases in aid performance monitoring systems.

What are the sources of the well-known differences in the performance of capitalist and socialist economic systems? Peter Murrell argues that the Schumpeterian model has far more power to answer this question than does the neoclassical theory generally used for that purpose. The neoclassical theory focuses on the absence of a price system and the inability of a centralized system to allocate resources efficiently, while the Schumpeterian model emphasizes the rigidity of institutions and policies in socialist economies and their lack of mechanisms either to create new institutions or to identify and to foster the growth of the most efficient organizations (including multinational corporations). In a work that will have profound consequences for the analysis of economic reform in socialist economies, Murrell compares the predictions of these two models against data summarizing foreign trade performance and finds the Schumpeterian model clearly superior. Combining international trade theory and econometric techniques, the author develops new methods of comparative economic analysis. These methods provide new information on the values of eleven resource endowments implicit in trade, the degree to which the socialist countries fit standard models of trade, the effect of multinational corporations on trade, and myriad other features of economic performance.

Originally published in 1990.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

What are the sources of the well-known differences in the performance of capitalist and socialist economic systems? Peter Murrell argues that the Schumpeterian model has far more power to answer this question than does the neoclassical theory generally used for that purpose. The neoclassical theory focuses on the absence of a price system and the inability of a centralized system to allocate resources efficiently, while the Schumpeterian model emphasizes the rigidity of institutions and policies in socialist economies and their lack of mechanisms either to create new institutions or to identify and to foster the growth of the most efficient organizations (including multinational corporations). In a work that will have profound consequences for the analysis of economic reform in socialist economies, Murrell compares the predictions of these two models against data summarizing foreign trade performance and finds the Schumpeterian model clearly superior. Combining international trade theory and econometric techniques, the author develops new methods of comparative economic analysis. These methods provide new information on the values of eleven resource endowments implicit in trade, the degree to which the socialist countries fit standard models of trade, the effect of multinational corporations on trade, and myriad other features of economic performance. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.