Romania's Railways under Transition: Reorganisation Rehabilitation and Regional Development
The paper attempts a review of the Romanian Railwaysduring transition. The first half of the paper considers the fall intraffic and the resulting financial problems which have made itdifficult to maintain the system and continue with any development.The organisation has been restructured so that separatefreight and passenger companies can now concentrate on specificbusiness and compete on the market while the infrastructurecompany is catching up on the maintenance backlog andis proceeding slowly with further electrification. The secondsection concentrates on the European project for high-speedtransport corridors and especially the interest of Romania'srailways in Corridors Four and Nine. Although there have beendelays over several years in starting the complex work of upgrading,contracts for the first phase of Corridor Four (Bucharest-Ctimpina) have now been signed, a new passenger coachrunning 200 km/his in service and locomotive upgrades are underway.The significance of all this for regional developmentlies in the fact that remarkably little of the 1989 network hasbeen closed and the system has remained basically intact tocope with the upswing in the economy that has taken placefrom 2000 onwards. The high-speed corridors, which include anumber of variants, comprise suffteient axes to afford directlinks with the economic macro regions while additional projectsare on hand to improve cohesion on the eastern frontier wherethe most serious development challenges exist.
Railways and economic development in Romania before 1918
Abstract Railways are generally credited with a major role in the delayed modernisation of southeastern Europe. In examining their impact in Romania up to the First World War, it is evident that the railways themselves constituted a major industry and they stimulated a good deal of business through demands for materials which were met increasingly from the within the national economy. There was also a major change in mobility and the selective development of towns and rural centres shows a strong correlation with railway services. Trends in manufacturing, agriculture and tourism also bring out strong correlations with the developing railway network. However, it is stressed that the railways were crucial through satisfying a precondition for economic growth and a range of other factors must also be recognised as underpinnings of the capitalist system in Romania over the half-century before the First World War.
Deliberative Democracy and the Resource Curse: A Nationwide Experiment in Tanzania
Oil and gas discoveries in developing countries are often associated with short-sighted economic policies and, in response, calls to insulate resource management from populist impulses. We report on a randomized experiment testing methods to overcome this apparent tension between sound resource governance and democratic politics. Soon after Tanzania’s discovery of major natural gas reserves, we invited a nationally representative sample of voters to an intensive public deliberation of policy options featuring nationally recognized experts and small-group discussions. Democratic deliberation reinforced the public’s strong preference for rapid spending of gas revenues, but also increased support for various prudential and economically orthodox measures, including independent oversight of gas revenues, limits on government borrowing, and selling gas abroad rather than subsidizing fuel at home. These effects were driven by deliberation per se, rather than a pure information treatment, and show no evidence of contamination by facilitatoror peer-effects in group deliberations. www.cgdev.org Justin Sandefur, Nancy Birdsall, James Fishkin, and Mujobu Moyo