Papers by Sujai Shivakumar
Counterfeits-fake goods that infringe on the intellectual property of legitimate businesses-harm ... more Counterfeits-fake goods that infringe on the intellectual property of legitimate businesses-harm consumers, businesses, and the economy. Addressing the proliferation of counterfeits in online marketplaces will require better collaboration between stakeholders in government and industry. To foster these efforts, U.S. policymakers should amend existing laws and regulations that limit stakeholders from sharing data and establish a data sharing partnership to use advanced analytics to disrupt counterfeiting networks. If successful, these efforts could substantially reduce counterfeit imports, creating an additional 15,000 to 20,000 manufacturing jobs in America.
Human beings continually adapt to their physical and social environment; problem-solving is a con... more Human beings continually adapt to their physical and social environment; problem-solving is a constant and core activity (Popper 2001). Every day, individuals encounter problems that they solve singly as well as jointly with others. In both cases, problem-solving proceeds within some explicit or implicit representation of the relevant situation. In cognitive problem solving, our behavior is largely the outcome of the rules and propensities bounded within particular worldviews. In associative problem-solving, our actions and interactions similarly reflect particular representations of the problem environment that we share with others.
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2005
Characteristics associated with advanced human development and rapid economic growth arise throug... more Characteristics associated with advanced human development and rapid economic growth arise through the forms of productive association that human beings refer to (whether consciously or tacitly) in their actions and interactions with each other. How well individuals come together to solve problems—and in this way realize their innovative potential—depends on the nature of evolved as well as deliberately constituted institutions through which they associate.
National Academies Press eBooks, 2007
... Growth: Elements of Successful State Strategies 54 TSR Subramanian, Government of India (reti... more ... Growth: Elements of Successful State Strategies 54 TSR Subramanian, Government of India (retired) India's Knowledge Economy in a Global Context 58 Carl J. Dahlman, Georgetown University Manufacturing Innovation as an Engine for India's Growth 67 Surinder Kapur, Sana ...
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2005
Pathologies identified with underdevelopment arise when existing weak or bad institutions fail to... more Pathologies identified with underdevelopment arise when existing weak or bad institutions fail to address recurrent localized problems of collective action. Development theory and aid practice in the western postwar tradition focus predominantly on the overall outcomes of these institutional failures, assigning to the state a central role in fixing these negative results. An alternate vision is to examine why institutions fail in the first place. This broader notion places emphasis on improving the innovative potentials of humans to develop and maintain the institutions needed to overcome problems of collective action. Developing this alternate vision is the larger aim of this book. In placing constitutional governance in context, this chapter examines some links between postwar interpretations of development with the approach of state governance.
The Review of Austrian Economics, Apr 20, 2020
Innovation requires cooperation among multiple actors spread across different organizations in or... more Innovation requires cooperation among multiple actors spread across different organizations in order to fund, research, develop, scale-up and bring new products and services to the marketplace. Proximity is often corelated with cooperation, leading to policies adopted around the world to build science and technology parks as a way of stimulating economic development. However, cooperation can falter in the presence of extant collective action problems. The transformation of collocated facilities and expertise into dynamic innovation clusters requires that multiple individual actors recognize the opportunities and synergies that can arise from cooperation, diagnose prevailing collective action problems, and craft the rules needed to solve the myriad challenges to working together. Elaborating the institutional contexts within which linkages across innovation ecosystems can grow and thrive can also broaden the opportunity for economic growth to areas beyond dense technology clusters.
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2005
The constitutional foundations of development can refer to a given political framework within whi... more The constitutional foundations of development can refer to a given political framework within which economic growth or social progress is to be engineered, or it can concern itself with the manner of composition and constraints which, through building up the rules of interaction among individuals in society, can enhance the potential for greater well-being. The first interpretation, as taken up in the Orthodox Development literature, refers implicitly to a model of the State. The second, examined here, set out how systems of collective action can be designed and conditioned to enable individuals in association with others to realize each their adaptive potentials.
Public Choice, Jul 25, 2012
The modern analysis of constitutional choice, which began 50 years ago with the publication of Th... more The modern analysis of constitutional choice, which began 50 years ago with the publication of The Calculus of Consent, is highly relevant in today's world. In recent times, calls for crafting new constitutional arrangements have been heard in the wake of the Arab Spring and in formation of new countries like South Sudan. Constitutional reform is similarly on the agenda in countries like Thailand, India, Hungary, and Belgium. And recent 'nation building' efforts have also introduced new constitutions in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. These efforts to craft new national constitutions can benefit enormously from the scholarship stimulated by The Calculus of Consent. This paper describes an initial attempt to apply some of the insights from the Calculus as well as the subsequent scholarship in public choice economics and constitutional political economy to the challenges of crafting the constitutional charters of Somaliland and Nepal. Admittedly, this is a limited set of experiences, but one that I hope can encourage others to take up the challenge of applying the insights of the Calculus to designing frameworks for self-governance in the real world. Following brief accounts of the recent conflicts and constitutional processes in both countries, the paper highlights major insights from the Calculus and related scholarship that has proved to be of particular relevance to contemporary constitutional drafters. 1 Constituting Somaliland from the bottom up The seeds of conflict in Somalia were sown when the Republic of Somalia was formed in 1960 by joining, under the auspices of the United Nations, de-colonized British and Italian Somalia. A western democratic model of a state, centered in Mogadishu, was conceived, complete with a National Assembly, a Prime Minister, and an elite bureaucracy. Given deep
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2005
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2005
Democracy is increasingly seen as the reality characterizing human civilization. In forging a new... more Democracy is increasingly seen as the reality characterizing human civilization. In forging a new democratic world for the twenty-first century, a new science of politics is necessary—one that draws on human capacities to craft the rules of self-governance through reflection and choice. Indeed, human beings possess the potential to improve their well-being by devising rules governing their association with each other. Drawing upon mutual understandings, these rules shape behavior in situations where individuals can jointly realize opportunities to improve their well-being.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Sep 8, 2005
What’s wrong with development aid? It is argued that much of aid’s failure is related to the inst... more What’s wrong with development aid? It is argued that much of aid’s failure is related to the institutions that structure its delivery. These institutions govern the complex relationships between the main actors in the aid delivery system, and often generate a series of perverse incentives that promote inefficient and unsustainable outcomes. The theoretical insights of the new institutional economics are applied to several settings. First, the institutions of Sida, the Swedish aid agency, is investigated to analyze how that aid agency’s institutions can produce incentives inimical to desired outcomes, contrary to the desires of its own staff. Second, cases from India, a country with low aid dependence, and Zambia, a country with high aid dependence, are used to explore how institutions on the ground in recipient countries might also mediate the effectiveness of aid. Suggestions are offered on how to improve aid’s effectiveness. These include how to structure evaluations in order to improve outcomes, how to employ agency staff to gain from their on-the-ground experience, and how to engage stakeholders as “owners” in the design, resource mobilization, learning, and evaluation process of development assistance programs.
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2005
As a system of organized exchange, the character of a given market reflects the rules that shape ... more As a system of organized exchange, the character of a given market reflects the rules that shape it. Abstract debate framed as to whether “the state” or “the market” is better in promoting development is therefore bound to miss the point. In the real world, the problem-solving potential of any market—and hence its capacity to facilitate development—depends critically on how the context of exchange is structured. These rules of the market are a part of any problem-solving community’s common institutional resources. A robust market relies on rules developed and fostered by the governing institutions— whether unofficial or bearing the escutcheon of the state—while the reason for governance, as a facility for problem-solving, is realized through processes of market and nonmarket exchange.
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2005
In moving from theory to practice, where can we begin? Crafting capabilities for self-governance ... more In moving from theory to practice, where can we begin? Crafting capabilities for self-governance begins by acknowledging prevailing institutions that actually guide how individuals associate with each other in various local contexts.1 Even though these institutions, as inherited, may not be optimal solutions to current collective-action problems, they are valuable as a shared point of orientation for individuals in a community. The challenge of constituting development involves drawing out and building on these existing institutional resources to meet new challenges of collective action (Shivakumar 2003).
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Papers by Sujai Shivakumar