Blog - Center for International Private Enterprise

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Corruption and the Law

Peter Schaefer has an interesting article over on TCSDaily called When 'The Law' Means Corruption. For those of you who don't know Peter, he's a former USAID official who has worked closely with Hernando de Soto for the past few years. His article focuses on the seeming intractibility of corruption ...

A Vision of a More Attractive Africa

Quote of the day comes from the Secretary-General of the U.N. Kofi Annan. As he notes in the latest issue (2006 #3) of the Compact Quarterly, a newsletter of the U.N. Global Compact: ...it is the absence of broad-based business activity, not its presence, that condemns much of humanity to suffer...

60% of Brazilians Work in the Informal Economy

The news agency EFE reports that 60% of Brazilian workers are employed in the informal economy. EFE based these numbers on a report that was just released by the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute (IBGE) According to EFE: One of the main areas of the informal economy is in the small and m...

Keeping Economic Growth on Track in Latin America

CIPE's latest Economic Reform Feature Service article by John Murphy takes a closer look at somewhat impressive macroeconomic numbers coming out from Latin America. In "Chronicle of a Bust Foretold" he argues that many of the positive statistics ...may be transitory — the very trends that are ...

Rule of Law and Corruption

Surprise, surprise! Corruption undermines democratic development and it is one of the primary reasons that democracies do not seem to deliver. This is according to the newly released report -- Countries at the Crossroads 2006 -- by the Freedom House (past issues are available here). Zimbabwe, Az...

Is Doha Round Dead?

I was surprised to see the results of the facilitation payments poll on this blog site. Only 26% of the respondents took a firm stance against facilitation payments, with the rest not excluding the possibility of 'greasing the wheels.' The new poll (available as always on the right-hand side of t...

Crisis in Zimbabwe: Too Much Authority, Too Little Liberty

In all governments, there is a perpetual intestine struggle, open or secret, between AUTHORITY and LIBERTY; and neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the contest. A great sacrifice of liberty must necessarily be made in every government; yet even the authority, which confines liberty, can...

Solutions to Poverty

Jeremy Seabrook will make you believe that markets can’t solve poverty problems the world is facing, and that governments must play a greater role in distributing the resources to people justly. Free markets, he argues, can’t lead to ‘equal societies’ because of their tende...

Banking on Women in Bangladesh

On August 8, for the first time ever, the government of Bangladesh hosted a ‘National SME Women Entrepreneurs Forum’, in order to meet with innovative female entrepreneurs and discuss necessary policy changes that will encourage women to get more involved in business. Prime Minister Khal...

What Democracy is Not

Debates over what constitutes democracies are popular these days. Some put emphasis on elections, governance, or liberty, others emphasize public services, fairness, or inclusiveness. Amid the differing opinions, it seems that defining democracies by what they are not is easier than figuring out...

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