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Advocating For a Better Economic Environment for Refugees
Refugee youth in Kakuma Refugee camp embody the endurance of the human spirit. A study carried out by the International Financial Corporation (IFC) in 2018 took a unique look at Kakuma Refugee Camp a...
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Worse Than a Pirated Polo Shirt

As reported in an IHT article in The New York Times online, the Bank of China has raised $9.7 billion dollars as it prepares to go public on the Hong Kong stock market next Thursday, making it the world's largest initial public offering of the last six years.  The piece is a good one to check out i...

CIPE in Pakistan After Four Months

The launch ceremony of CIPE Pakistan was held on 19 January 2006 in which was attended by about 300 business leaders, high ranking government officials, and media representatives. Minister of Commerce was the chief guest. He extended his full support to CIPE activities in Pakistan. CIPE Washington o...

Public Private Dialogue: From Ideas to Action

Earlier this year, the World Bank, IFC, OECD Development Centre, and DFID held a workshop on public private dialogue (PPD).  The workshop report is now available here. One of the outcomes of the workshop has been the drafting of the "Charter of Good Practice in using Public Private Dialogue for Pr...

Who Needs Corporate Governance Anyway?

Yesterday’s Moscow Times article (first few days free, members only thereafter) looks at corporate governance practices in Russian companies.  Referencing a recent study of CIPE partner Russian Institute of Directors (RID) the story highlights the fact that in many Russian companies corporate...

Democracy Has Spoken! Or Not Yet?

Earlier, I wrote about efforts in Nigeria to change the constitution to allow the president run for a third consecutive term.  Well, today, the Nigerian Senate blocked the proposal, and it seems like the country is set for a first peaceful change of governments: Obasanjo’s supporters did not...

High Informality=Economic Stagnation

Last week’s MSNBC story on high levels of informality and economic stagnation is an interesting one: What do Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan have in common? Obviously, they are Asian nations that joined the ranks of the wealthy during the second half of the 20th century. But a less well-...

Income Disparities

Moises Naim takes a closer look at inequality anxieties in his latest FP piece.  The major point? In truth, in some places inequality has become far worse, and in other places the changes are fairly minor. But what is most clear is that whereas the statistics about inequality do not show major vari...

Emergency Law in Egypt

President Mubarak's election platform included promises to revoke laws restricting press freedom and judicial independence and to abrogate the 25-year-old state of emergency. Eight months after his re-election, however, municipal elections have been postponed for two years and the government is inv...

Crackdown in Egypt?

Six journalists have been arrested in Cairo in what appears to be a sign that the Mubarak regime is preparing to crackdown on dissent in Egypt after a certain level of tolerance over the last couple of years. The arrests come on the heels of a vote by the Egyptian Parliament for a two-year extension...

Doing Business In Latin America

Check out the new Latin Business Index published by the Latin Business Chronicle.  The results are intriguing. If there is one country that embodies the ideal business climate, it is Chile. The country managed to top all but one of the five main categories. It came ahead of Mexico in macro environ...

A Note on the Informal Sector

Protests, initiated by government's expulsion of unlicensed street vendors in a Mexican town, turn violent.   Although it seems that kicking out informal vendors from the market was just a spark which ignited some deep-rooted, mostly political tensions, the situation with informal vendors is wor...

The Magic Wand of Nationalization?

President Morales' move to nationalize hydrocarbons in Bolivia has come as a cold shower for many in the international community. However, many of Evo Morales supporters have seen the nationalization of hydrocarbons, in particular natural gas, as the key tool to reduce poverty in the country. The r...

Evo Causes Rift in Latin America’s Liberal Alliance

On Monday, May Day, Bolivia's populist, liberal president Evo Morales announced his plan to nationalize the nation's energy sector. This action was the fulfillment of his electoral pledge to assert control over Bolivia's vast natural gas reserves to help divert money to the nation's impoverished, pr...

Egyptian Parliament delivers major setback to reform

The reform momentum gained in Egypt in the past few years suffered a major setback Sunday as the Egyptian Parliament voted to extend the country's "Emergency Laws," effectively consolidating power for President Hosni Mubarak for another couple of years. No reform measure was more anticipated than ca...

Putting the Cart Before the Horse

One of the common explanations for failures of market reforms in Latin America to deliver in many cases has been the argument that first generation reforms weren’t followed up by the second generation ones.  The idea is that the Washington Consensus was not inherently wrong – afterall, ...

Business Against Corruption

The UN Global Compact just released a new publication, featuring case studies of business initiatives aimed at eradicating corrupt behavior. Issues addressed in the publication include: the implications of the UN Convention against Corruption, the correlation between corruption, development and go...

Reducing Poverty: An Incomplete Objective?

Lifting billions of people out of poverty is an unchallenged, conventional wisdom of international development.  As the development community works hard to meet the Millennium Development Goals and come up with ways to move the poor into the higher income brackets either through aid or economic ref...

Working with Partner Organizations

This month CIPE held a special conference in Istanbul, Turkey, for its field office personnel (thanks to funding from the National Endowment for Democracy). A highlight of the conference was a panel in which former and current partners from central and eastern Europe participated. Four partners spok...

Rough Times for Russian Property Rights

"In the 90's, your enemy operated openly and you knew how to defend yourself," Semyonov said. "I was shot by bandits who wanted our business, but we survived. Today I'm facing Oxford-educated lawyers." Today's Washington Post highlights a new phenomenon in business that our partners in Russia have b...

What Good is a Constitution…

…if you can change it at will? I’ve been thinking for a while whether to write about the ongoing debate in Nigeria on changing the country’s constitution to allow President Obasanjo run for a third term.  Here is what supporters of the move have to say: “There are three rea...
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