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This paper aims to show that the Spanish central administration, as a representative of the Napoleonic tradition, has undergone considerable managerial changes in non‐autonomous and semi‐autonomous agencies characterised by their direct involvement in service delivery in spite of the failure of macro‐changes and radical reforms of public administration.

This paper provides case studies of “paths” of changes in three organisations.

Through “layering” and “diffusion” of institutions as social mechanisms included in the historical new institutionalism account for innovation, specific organisations like the tax agency, social security and property registry have become more managerial in a state dominated by public law.

More in‐depth case studies would make possible generalisation of how small changes can produce similar impacts or results than reform efforts at the macro‐level.

The use of historical neo‐institutionalism and the exam of mechanisms as “layering” and “diffusion” for explaining change is presented.

This paper aims to outline the contents of the special issue on public management reform in countries in the Napoleonic administrative tradition, discussing alternative explanatory frameworks, and proposing paths for future research.

This article provides reviews of the papers in the special issue.

Some broad sets of factor affecting implementation of public management reform in Napoleonic countries are outlined, schematised in a specific table, and discussed in the light of potential alternative frameworks, like cultural analysis.

Research limitations include the availability of empirical evidence given the width of the phenomenon under investigation (public management reform in five countries). Implications for the development of a broader comparative research agenda on countries in the Napoleonic administrative tradition (and others) are proposed.

The special issue, of which this paper provides an overview, fills a gap in the literature by providing systematic and comparative analysis of public management reform in five under‐investigated countries in the Napoleonic administrative tradition, arguably an important contribution to the widening of the comparative research agenda in public management.

Traditionally, remittances have been analyzed in the context of their socioeconomic impact on the receiving communities. Consequently, little is known about the macroeconomic factors that influence their behavior. This paper aims to evaluate the importance of several macroeconomic indicators on the flow of remittances from the USA to El Salvador.

The analysis considers cointegration and common cycle tests. It includes as explanatory variables gross domestic product (GDP) and the interest rates differential in El Salvador, employment in California, and M2 as a measure of the stance of US monetary policy. These variables are intended to capture macroeconomic conditions in the host and home countries.

The study finds that all variables share a common trend and a common cycle with remittances; though the association with the interest rates differential in the short‐run is weak. That is, remittances respond significantly to transitory and permanent changes in macroeconomic conditions. El Salvador's GDP is negatively associated with remittances, while employment, the interest rates differential, and M2 exhibit a direct relationship at both time horizons.

Understanding how macroeconomic conditions influence the supply of US dollars via remittances is fundamental for policy makers in a dollarized economy. In the absence of tools to implement discretionary monetary policy, officials in El Salvador can benefit from learning how the flows of US dollars to the economy respond to macroeconomic shocks.

Analyzing the macroeconomic determinants of remittances for a dollarized economy is a novel exercise. Furthermore, the combined long‐ and short‐run approach allows recognizing how macroeconomic conditions influence this capital flow in the steady state and during transitory episodes.

Political economy research recognizes that the inflows of external financial resources help the governments enact market-oriented reforms. Since remittances have outpaced other types of financial inflows in many countries, they can potentially increase the government’s incentive to implement regulatory reform that can contribute to business-friendly environment. This issue has long been overlooked by the literature on remittances. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether remittances promote business regulatory reform in the recipient countries.

This study uses balance of payments data on remittances for 114 countries during 2004-2012 period. Since remittances could be endogenous to business regulation, the identification strategy follows an instrumental variable approach. The author assesses the general stability of linear model estimates by fitting the beta regression model.

The results show that, while the increase in remittance inflows is associated with lower regulatory requirements for starting a business in the recipient economy, this association is stronger in developing countries than in high-income nations. Various sensitivity tests reinforce the robustness of these findings.

One of the most important yet overlooked aspects of remittances is that they can potentially shape the political will to enact regulatory reform for businesses. The incentives for the government to relax burdensome entry regulations tend to stem from potential gains associated with the formalization of remittances. This paper makes a first attempt at studying the link between remittances and the quality of entry regulation.

The paper aims at developing a theoretical model for de facto dollarized small open economies focusing on currency substitution and nominal wages indexation to the exchange rate.

The analysis is performed in a general equilibrium “New Open Economy Macroeconomics” framework with nominal rigidities and imperfect competition in the nontraded good sector.

The paper finds that a dollar‐indexed economy with low degrees of payments/financial dollarization could experience higher costs in terms of exchange rate and output fluctuations when nominal shocks dominate real shocks, making stabilization programs more difficult to achieve in a rapid and less costly way.

The speed of adjustment of macro variables is faster in the highly dollarized economy as a response to a higher and more volatile inflation rate. A higher level of financial dollarization increases the frequency of domestic prices and wages revisions to nominal exchange rate shocks. This might explain, in turn, why nominal disturbances are shorter lived in the higher dollarized economies, and the asymmetry between financial and real dollarization

Contrary to the “conventional wisdom” that predicts a positive relationship between the degrees of dollarization and the exchange rate pass‐through, our model shows that the degree of dollarization and the degree of dollar indexation are not necessarily the same or even correlated.

Recent discussions of how members of the middle classes define themselves have focused on cultural patterns, following Bourdieu's (1984) influential work on how occupational, educational, and cultural fields combine to configure classes. Researchers have extended this approach to studies of the emerging middle classes in the global South, adapting these concepts to the specific circumstances of postcolonial settings in a globalizing world. This chapter explores these processes among urban middle-class Chileans. I show how members of the middle classes seek meaningful identities while engaging in symbolic combat with other groups in a society historically marked by an aristocratic elite, a recent military dictatorship, and free market policies that have reconfigured the possibilities for upward and downward mobility while integrating Chile more firmly within global commodity and image circuits. The principal foci of conflict are cultural consumption, childrearing and education, as well as electronic media use. Members of Chile's middle classes are locked in an unresolved conflict over who they are, who they should be, and where they fit in the global cultural economy.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the transnational entrepreneurial activities of Colombian emigrants to the USA in the context of the Colombian government’s policies and initiatives aimed at encouraging and facilitating emigrants’ transnational entrepreneurship. It examines the profile of Colombian emigrants, the entrepreneurial transnational activities they pursue and the actual and potential role of the government in instigating and shaping these activities.

The paper analyzes data obtained from focus groups with migrant families and interviews with governmental officials and an expert researcher. It also evaluates secondary data sources relevant to the subject of the paper.

The impact of transnational activities of Colombian migrants upon Colombian economy and society is much lower compared with the activities of migrants in other countries and with the potential these activities could have for contributing to the economic development of Colombia. Possible causes of this include: the specific characteristics of the Colombian emigrant and entrepreneur profile, the fragmentation of transnational networks of the migrants and the lack of governmental strategies to support the development of transnational activities of migrants.

The paper contributes to the debates on emigrant–state relation through offering an analysis of migrant entrepreneurship, technology and knowledge transfer and investment activities of Colombian emigrants in the home country. It also provides recommendations for policy action and concrete government programs that might encourage greater involvement of Colombian migrants in high value-adding activities that could benefit the country’s development.

Financial dollarisation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is most persistent compared to other regions of the world. The purpose of this paper is to complement the existing scant literature on dollarisation in Africa by assessing the role of information sharing offices (public credit registries and private credit bureaus) on financial dollarisation in 25 SSA countries for the period 2001-2012.

The empirical evidence is based on ordinary least squares and generalised method of moments (GMM).

The findings show that information sharing offices (which are designed to reduce information asymmetry) in the banking industry are a deterrent to dollarisation. The underpinning assumption that financial development reduces financial dollarisation is confirmed.

There is scant literature on the relevance of information sharing offices in development outcomes in Africa. While the establishment of these offices in most countries in the continent began in 2004, scholarship on the importance of these offices in financial development is sparse.

The purpose of this paper is to simulate the indirect and direct effects of remittances in developing countries.

The paper estimates a dynamic macroeconomic model and estimates the short‐run and long‐run dynamic multiplier effects of hypothetical temporary changes in remittances, as well as simulates the permanent effects of observed remittances.

The results indicate positive multiplier effects in general, and they also reveal a substantial variability across income categories and regions. The results indicate that low‐income economies are more inclined to spend their incomes on consumption and investments than middle‐income economies and, therefore, have a higher short‐run potential gain from receiving remittances. Low‐income economies typically reside in Sub‐Saharan Africa, whereas middle‐income economies are mainly found in East Europe, Latin America and North Africa and the Middle East. However, actual gains from remittances are highest in lower middle‐income economies because these countries receive more remittances. Generally, the short‐run effects are higher than the long‐run effects due to a sustained dependence of imported goods and services.

The paper analyzes the effects of remittances on components in aggregate demand.

The results support the World Bank's current policy recommendation that remittances should be promoted.

The paper corrects the algebraic solution for dynamic multiplier effects in Glytsos's work, written in 2005, and estimates the model for a macroeconomic panel containing 115 developing countries. The paper considers the effects of the net flows of remittances rather than of inflows only.