I have not blogged for a few days amid work overload. I will catch up with my daily reading over the weekend, but in the meantime I have added few interesting papers to my public resources (click on resources). Topics of these papers range from monetary policy, impact of rising China and India to knowledge economy and intellectual capital.

On the last note those of you who are interested in knowledge management I highly recommend two papers on changing management culture in the public sector here and here (thanks to Katarzyna Krolak-Wyszynska for sending me these links), which base on Canadian experience. This change of culture in the public sector is BADLY NEEDED in many countries. While most reform talk concentrates on reducing budget deficits, getting institutions right, few economists talk about lack of management effciency in the public sector. In my view it is the source of ENORMOUS INEFFICIENCY. Silo-units hoarding information rather than sharing it, hidden agendas, conflicting goals, I could go on for hours. Creating the common vision, aligning strategic goals with that vision, creating proper incentives to make people stakeholders of that vision could produce efficiency gains of the order of few percent of GDP. Imagine that construction company is building a bridge, but every unit of that company builds a different one, according to their individual design. How long would it take to build it, how much would it cost, would you risk to drive your car over this bridge. This is how public secotr functions in many countries round the world. Often recommendations are that bridge should be wider, or made of different materials, etc. but these recommendations fail to note that the whole construction process is faulty. I think that this public sector management failure is particularly pronounced in former communist countries, where 50 years of communism created completely wrong incentives and absurd public sector management culture, based on lack of trust, fear to take decisions, fear to take responsibility, failure to put citizens interests ahead of ones own. I hope that it will take less than 50 years to put proper management culture in place. Former communist countries should learn from Canada, Nordic countries, and some Asian countries. In some places learning curve is already very steep.