Institutions and Collective Choice in Developing Countries : Applications of the Theory of Public Choice

MWANGI S. KIMENYI has been an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Connecticut since 1991. Between 1987-1991, he was Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Mississippi. He was born in Kenya and received his B.ED in chemistry from the University of Nairobi, MA in International Affairs and MA in Economics from Ohio University, and the Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. He is Vice President and Chief Financial Controller of the African Educational Foundation for Public Policy and Market Process, Inc., and Managing Director of the African Institute for Public Policy and Market Process, Kenya. He is the author of Economics of Poverty, Discrimination and Public Policy (South-Western, 1995), Ethnic Diversity, Liberty and the State: The African Dilemma (Edward Elgar, 1998), He is the author of over 60 scholarly articles. His current research focuses on public choice and institutional reforms in developing countries. JOHN MUKUM MBAKU is Professor of Economics at Weber State University, Ogden, Utah and Associate Editor (Africa), Journal of Third World Studies. He is also President of the African Educational Foundation for Public Policy and Market Process, Inc. He was born in Cameroon and received the Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Georgia in 1985. He has previously taught at the University of Georgia and Kennesaw State University. His present research interests are in public choice, constitutional political economy, trade integration, intergroup relations, and institutional reforms in Africa. During 1994-1995, he served as the President of the Association of Third World Studies, Inc. He has traveled to several developing countries to lecture on market reforms. He is the author of Institutions and Reform in Africa: The Public Choice Perspective (Praeger, 1997); editor of Corruption and the Crisis of Institutional Reforms in Africa (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1998), and co-editor (with Julius O. Ihonvbere) of Multiparty Democracy and Political Change: Constraints to Democratization in Africa (Ash- gate, 1998).