Institutional Quality in North Korea

[Dave Backus @ NYU]

Wonderful insight from the Peterson Institute, via Marginal
Revolution.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics, based in
Washington, recently published conclusions from a 2007 survey of 250
Chinese companies doing business in North Korea. The authors found
that while nearly 90 percent were profitable, the companies “generally
have a negative assessment of the business environment” for reasons
like poor infrastructure and lack of rule of law.

My colleague, Kim Schoenholtz, says it reminds him of a story from the
mid-1980s when he was at Salomon. A Russian official came up from DC,
and complained bitterly about the "bloated social welfare system" in
the US. As Stan Zin likes to say: for the "irony impaired."

Link: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/10/markets-in-a-few-things.html