Lawrence King
Biographic Data
| ID | 3582365 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lawrence King |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lawrence |
| FAMILY NAME | King |
| SIGNATURE | KING L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5714-406X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 471 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
The IMF, Structural Adjustment, and Poverty: A Cross-National Difference-in-Differences Analysis, 1980-2019
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been one of the world’s most powerful international organisations in setting the parameters for economic reforms in the developing world. In this study, using annual cross-national data from 1980–2019, we investigate the impact of the IMF’s lending programmes on poverty incidence in participant countries. Departing from the prevailing practice of relying on instrumental variables, we employ a novel differ…
Commodification and Social Reproduction: Theory and Mixed-Method Evidence on the Effect of Privatization on Childbearing
Social reproduction scholars have made headway in integrating the analysis of capitalism, class, gender, and care. We offer two contributions to this literature. First, we provide a novel framework with insights into companies as sites of decommodification, shaping childcare cost distribution and affecting childbearing rates. Second, we extend social reproduction research geographically to the oft-overlooked region of Eastern Europe. Eastern Euro…
Deindustrialization, social disintegration, and health: A Neoclassical Sociological Approach
Deindustrialization is a major burden on workers' health in many countries, calling for theoretically informed sociological analysis. Here, we present a novel neoclassical sociological synthesis of the lived experience of deindustrialization. We conceptualize industry as a social institution whose disintegration has widespread implications for the social fabric. Combining Durkheimian and Marxian categories, we show that deindustrialization genera…
Initially High Correlation between Air Pollution and Covid-19 Mortality Declined to Zero as the Pandemic Progressed: There Is No Evidence for a Causal Link between Air Pollution and Covid-19 Vulnerabi…
Wu et al. found a strong positive association between cumulative daily county-level COVID-19 mortality and long-term average PM 2.5 concentrations for data up until September 2020. We replicated the results of Wu et al. and extended the analysis up until May 2022. The association between PM 2.5 concentration and cumulative COVID-19 mortality fell sharply after September 2020. Using the data available from Wu et al.'s "updated_data" branch up unti…
Deaths of Despair in Comparative Perspective
A socially patterned epidemic of deaths of despair is a signal feature of American society in the twenty-first century, involving rising mortality from substance use disorders and self-harm at the bottom of the class structure. In the present review, we compare this population health crisis to that which ravaged Eastern Europe at the tail end of the previous century. We chart their common upstream causes: violent social dislocations wrought by ra…
Corporate political power and US foreign policy, 1981-2002: The Role of the Policy-Planning Network
Recent empirical work has offered strong support for 'biased pluralism' and 'economic elite' accounts of political power in the United States, according a central role to 'business interest groups' as a mechanism through which corporate influence is exerted. Here, we propose an additional channel of influence for corporate interests: the 'policy-planning network,' consisting of corporate-dominated foundations, think tanks, and elite policy-discus…
Incarceration and mortality in the United States
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has spotlighted the role of America's overcrowded prisons as vectors of ill health, but robust analyses of the degree to which high rates of incarceration impact population-level health outcomes remain scarce. In this paper, we use county-level panel data from 2927 counties across 43 states between 1983 and 2014 and a novel instrumental variable technique to study the causal effect of penal expansion on age-standardi…
Bad governance: How privatization increases corruption in the developing world
International organizations have become key actors in the fight against corruption. Among these organizations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) maintains a powerful position over borrowing countries in its ability to mandate far‐ranging policy reforms – so‐called “conditionalities” – in exchange for access to financial assistance. While IMF pressure can force the implementation of anti‐corruption policies, potentially reducing corruption, ot…
Globalization and health equity: The impact of structural adjustment programs on developing countries
Among the many drivers of health inequities, this article focuses on important, yet insufficiently understood, international-level determinants: economic globalization and the organizations that spread market-oriented policies to the developing world. One such organization is the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provides financial assistance to countries in economic trouble in exchange for policy reforms. Through its 'structural adjustmen…
Cross‐country evidence on the social determinants of the post‐socialist mortality crisis in Europe: A review and performance‐based hierarchy of variables
An unprecedented mortality crisis befell the former socialist countries between 1989 and 1995, representing one of the greatest demographic shocks of the period after the Second World War. While it is likely that country‐level variation in the post‐socialist mortality crisis in Eastern Europe can be explained by a constellation of political and socio‐economic factors, no comprehensive review of the existing scholarly attempts at explaining these …
The International Monetary Fund’s interventions in food and agriculture: An analysis of loans and conditions
The political economy of labor market deregulation during IMF interventions
This study examines the relationship between policy interventions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and de jure labor rights. Combining two novel data sets with unprecedented country-year coverage – leximetric data on labor laws and disaggregated data on IMF conditionality – our analysis of up to 70 developing countries from 1980 to 2014 demonstrates that IMF-mandated labor market policy measures significantly reduce both individual and co…
The World System and the Hollowing Out of State Capacity: How Structural Adjustment Programs Affect Bureaucratic Quality in Developing Countries
The administrative ability of the state to deliver effective policy is essential for economic development. While sociologists have long devoted attention to domestic forces underpinning state capacity, the authors focus on world system pressures from Western-dominated international organizations. Scrutinizing policy reforms mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the authors argue that “structural conditions” exert deleterious effects …
How structural adjustment programs affect inequality: A disaggregated analysis of IMF conditionality, 1980-2014
Intergenerational Mobility in Relative Educational Attainment and Health-Related Behaviours
The wounds of post-socialism: A systematic review of the social determinants of mortality in Hungary
Perils of development funding? The tale of EU Funds and grand corruption in Central and Eastern Europe
Given the unprecedented scale of intergovernmental development funding and the importance of institutional quality for human well‐being, it is imperative to precisely understand the impact of development funds on corruption. In Europe, European Union (EU) Funds provide a boost to public spending in recipient member states while introducing additional corruption controls. We investigate whether EU Funds increase high‐level corruption in the Czech …
Environmental destruction in the new economy: Offshore finance and mangrove forest clearance in Grand Cayman
The IMF and government health expenditure: A response to Sanjeev Gupta
The impact of IMF conditionality on government health expenditure: A cross-national analysis of 16 West African nations
Governing drug reimbursement policy in Poland: The role of the state, civil society, and the private sector
This article investigates the distribution of power in Poland’s drug reimbursement policy in the early 2000s. We examine competing theoretical expectations suggested by neopluralism, historical institutionalism, corporate domination, and clique theory of the post-communist state, using data from a purposive sample of 109 semi-structured interviews and documentary sources. We have four concrete findings. First, we uncovered rapid growth in budgeta…
Mortality in Transition: Study Protocol of the PrivMort Project, a multilevel convenience cohort study
In addition to reinforcing existing evidence linking smoking, hazardous drinking and unemployment to mortality, the PrivMort dataset will investigate the variation in transition experiences for individual respondents and their families across settlements characterized by differing contextual factors, including industrial characteristics, simultaneously providing information about how excess mortality is distributed across settlements with various…
IMF conditionality and development policy space, 1985–2014
In recent years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has re-emerged as a central actor in global economic governance. Its rhetoric and policies suggest that the organization has radically changed the ways in which it offers financial assistance to countries in economic trouble. We revisit two long-standing controversies: Has the policy content of IMF programmes evolved to allow for more policy space? Do these programmes now allow for the protec…
The persistence of cliques in the post-communist state. The case of deniability in drug reimbursement policy in Poland
This article explores a key question in political sociology: Can post-communist policy-making be described with classical theories of the Western state or do we need a theory of the specificity of the post-communist state? In so doing, we consider Janine Wedel's clique theory, concerned with informal social actors and processes in post-communist transition. We conducted a case study of drug reimbursement policy in Poland, using 109 stakeholder in…
Islamist insurgency and the war against polio: A cross-national analysis of the political determinants of polio
BACKGROUND: There is widespread agreement that civil war obstructs efforts to eradicate polio. It is suggested that Islamist insurgents have a particularly negative effect on vaccination programmes, but this claim is controversial. METHODS: We analyse cross-national data for the period 2003-14 using negative binomial regressions to investigate the relationship between Islamist and non-Islamist insurgency and the global distribution of polio. The …
IMF conditionality and development policy space, 1985–2014
In recent years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has re-emerged as a central actor in global economic governance. Its rhetoric and policies suggest that the organization has radically changed the ways in which it offers financial assistance to countries in economic trouble. We revisit two long-standing controversies: Has the policy content of IMF programmes evolved to allow for more policy space? Do these programmes now allow for the protec…
Mass Privatization, State Capacity, and Economic Growth in Post-Communist Countries
Why did the transition from socialism to capitalism result in improved growth in some countries and significant economic decline in others? Scholars have advanced three main arguments: (1) successful countries rapidly implemented neoliberal policies; (2) failures were not due to policies but to poor institutional environments; and (3) policies were counterproductive because they damaged the state. We present a state-centered theory and empiricall…
Is wealthier always healthier? The impact of national income level, inequality, and poverty on public health in Latin America
Deaths of Despair in Comparative Perspective
A socially patterned epidemic of deaths of despair is a signal feature of American society in the twenty-first century, involving rising mortality from substance use disorders and self-harm at the bottom of the class structure. In the present review, we compare this population health crisis to that which ravaged Eastern Europe at the tail end of the previous century. We chart their common upstream causes: violent social dislocations wrought by ra…
Globalization and health equity: The impact of structural adjustment programs on developing countries
Among the many drivers of health inequities, this article focuses on important, yet insufficiently understood, international-level determinants: economic globalization and the organizations that spread market-oriented policies to the developing world. One such organization is the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provides financial assistance to countries in economic trouble in exchange for policy reforms. Through its 'structural adjustmen…
The World System and the Hollowing Out of State Capacity: How Structural Adjustment Programs Affect Bureaucratic Quality in Developing Countries
The administrative ability of the state to deliver effective policy is essential for economic development. While sociologists have long devoted attention to domestic forces underpinning state capacity, the authors focus on world system pressures from Western-dominated international organizations. Scrutinizing policy reforms mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the authors argue that “structural conditions” exert deleterious effects …
Structural adjustment and public spending on health: Evidence from IMF programs in low-income countries
The impact of IMF conditionality on government health expenditure: A cross-national analysis of 16 West African nations
Postcommunist divergence: A comparative analysis of the transition to capitalism in Poland and Russia
The political economy of labor market deregulation during IMF interventions
This study examines the relationship between policy interventions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and de jure labor rights. Combining two novel data sets with unprecedented country-year coverage – leximetric data on labor laws and disaggregated data on IMF conditionality – our analysis of up to 70 developing countries from 1980 to 2014 demonstrates that IMF-mandated labor market policy measures significantly reduce both individual and co…
How structural adjustment programs affect inequality: A disaggregated analysis of IMF conditionality, 1980-2014
The State-Led Transition to Liberal Capitalism: Neoliberal, Organizational, World-Systems, and Social Structural Explanations of Poland's Economic Success
Neoliberals argue that rapid liberalization and privatization can transform postcommunist economies into Western‐style capitalist systems. Organizational sociologists argue that these policies produce a unique variety of capitalism, while world‐systems theorists argue that they lead to underdevelopment. This article advances a social structural alternative in a crucial case. Poland's relative economic success resulted from prolonged state ownersh…
The State, International Agencies, and Property Transformation in Postcommunist Hungary
This article challenges evolutionary accounts of property transformation in postcommunist Hungary, which hold that novel property forms based on interenterprise ownership have emerged in that country. It shows that private property has emerged as the predominant category of ownership in Hungary and explains the rapid diffusion of private ownership by focusing on the actions of the state and international agencies such as the International Monetar…
Catalyzing Aid? The IMF and Donor Behavior in Aid Allocation
Intergenerational Mobility in Relative Educational Attainment and Health-Related Behaviours
Adivasis, Maoists and Insurgency in the Central Indian Tribal Belt
Maoist insurgent or Naxalite activity has expanded markedly in India over the past three decades, especially in the central tribal belt. This paper first uses a unique, district-level dataset to demonstrate that insurgency does not, as is widely argued, occur where tribals or Adivasis have been dispossessed of their land and forced to work as landless labourers. Rather, insurgent activity is most likely to take place in areas where Adivasis retai…
Bad governance: How privatization increases corruption in the developing world
International organizations have become key actors in the fight against corruption. Among these organizations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) maintains a powerful position over borrowing countries in its ability to mandate far‐ranging policy reforms – so‐called “conditionalities” – in exchange for access to financial assistance. While IMF pressure can force the implementation of anti‐corruption policies, potentially reducing corruption, ot…
Perils of development funding? The tale of EU Funds and grand corruption in Central and Eastern Europe
Given the unprecedented scale of intergovernmental development funding and the importance of institutional quality for human well‐being, it is imperative to precisely understand the impact of development funds on corruption. In Europe, European Union (EU) Funds provide a boost to public spending in recipient member states while introducing additional corruption controls. We investigate whether EU Funds increase high‐level corruption in the Czech …
Foreign Direct Investment and transition
This article examines the debate on the developmental impact of foreign direct investment (FDI). While the most frequent finding within sociology is that FDI is harmful or at least less beneficial than domestic investment, most who study the transition from socialism or make economic policy in the region consider FDI to be a major motor of development. This paper examines the impact of FDI with a novel methodology. Rather than employing the stand…
Deindustrialization, social disintegration, and health: A Neoclassical Sociological Approach
Deindustrialization is a major burden on workers' health in many countries, calling for theoretically informed sociological analysis. Here, we present a novel neoclassical sociological synthesis of the lived experience of deindustrialization. We conceptualize industry as a social institution whose disintegration has widespread implications for the social fabric. Combining Durkheimian and Marxian categories, we show that deindustrialization genera…
Is wealthier always healthier in poor countries? The health implications of income, inequality, poverty, and literacy in India
Making markets: A comparative study of postcommunist managerial strategies in Central Europe
Shock Privatization: The Effects of Rapid Large-Scale Privatization on Enterprise Restructuring
The neoliberal-inspired "shock therapy" policies were designed to allow efficiency considerations to shape the new capitalist economies. Most experts theorized that these policies would enable postcommunist countries to close the gap with the West. After more than a decade, this prediction has been falsified. Fieldwork in 25 Russian firms demonstrates that the neoliberal prescription of mass privatization creates shocks that make successful enter…
The International Monetary Fund’s interventions in food and agriculture: An analysis of loans and conditions
The persistence of cliques in the post-communist state. The case of deniability in drug reimbursement policy in Poland
This article explores a key question in political sociology: Can post-communist policy-making be described with classical theories of the Western state or do we need a theory of the specificity of the post-communist state? In so doing, we consider Janine Wedel's clique theory, concerned with informal social actors and processes in post-communist transition. We conducted a case study of drug reimbursement policy in Poland, using 109 stakeholder in…
The Role of the Judiciary in Relation to Public Administration
The relationship between the judiciary and public administration is founded in the constitutional principles which lie at the basis of our system of government. The three branches or arms of government, as they are known to constitutional law, are the legislative, the executive and the judicial. They are said to be equal and coordinate. There is a complex constitutional relationship between the three arms of government which does not always follo…
The Great Surprise of the Small Transformation: The Demise of Communism and the Rise of the Private Sector in Hungary
The relatively peaceful and rapid collapse of Communism came as a great surprise to most, and the varied paths followed by the countries emerging from Communism has puzzled many. Ro: na-Tas argues that, under Communism, the central institution organizing society was universal state employment. Over time, universal state employment eroded and a weak private sector evolved, before Communism collapsed. This erosion is what the book calls the The Sma…
Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Traders, Disorder, and Citizenship Regimes in Provincial Russia Chapter 3 Fuzzy Property: Rights, Power, and Identity in Transylvania's Decollectivization Chapter 4 Barter of the Bankrupt: The Politics of Demonetization in Russia's Federal State Chapter 5 Slick Salesmen and Simple People: Negotiated Capitalism in a Privatized Polish Firm Chapter 6 But We Are Still Mothers: Gender, State, and the Construction of Ne…
Foreign Direct Investment and transition
This article examines the debate on the developmental impact of foreign direct investment (FDI). While the most frequent finding within sociology is that FDI is harmful or at least less beneficial than domestic investment, most who study the transition from socialism or make economic policy in the region consider FDI to be a major motor of development. This paper examines the impact of FDI with a novel methodology. Rather than employing the stand…
Making markets: A comparative study of postcommunist managerial strategies in Central Europe
Postcommunist divergence: A comparative analysis of the transition to capitalism in Poland and Russia
Beyond Manichean economics: Foreign Direct Investment and Growth in the Transition From Socialism
Using case study data from Hungary, this paper explores the developmental impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) in transition economies. A review of the debate on FDI is conducted by exploring the political discourse surrounding this issue in Hungary. The numerous and competitive purported mechanisms linking FDI with either economic growth or stagnation are used to analyze the case studies. This analysis reveals that FDI can take very differe…
The State, International Agencies, and Property Transformation in Postcommunist Hungary
This article challenges evolutionary accounts of property transformation in postcommunist Hungary, which hold that novel property forms based on interenterprise ownership have emerged in that country. It shows that private property has emerged as the predominant category of ownership in Hungary and explains the rapid diffusion of private ownership by focusing on the actions of the state and international agencies such as the International Monetar…
Beyond Manichean economics: Foreign direct investment and growth in the transition from socialism
Correction| March 01 2003 Beyond Manichean economics: foreign direct investment and growth in the transition from socialism L.P. King, L.P. King * Yale University, Department of Siciology, PO Box 208265, New Haven CT 06520-8265, USA * Fax: +1 203 432 6976. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar B. Váradi B. Váradi Yale University, Department of Siciology, PO Box 208265, New Haven CT 06520-8265, USA Search for ot…
Shock Privatization: The Effects of Rapid Large-Scale Privatization on Enterprise Restructuring
The neoliberal-inspired "shock therapy" policies were designed to allow efficiency considerations to shape the new capitalist economies. Most experts theorized that these policies would enable postcommunist countries to close the gap with the West. After more than a decade, this prediction has been falsified. Fieldwork in 25 Russian firms demonstrates that the neoliberal prescription of mass privatization creates shocks that make successful enter…
The State-Led Transition to Liberal Capitalism: Neoliberal, Organizational, World-Systems, and Social Structural Explanations of Poland's Economic Success
Neoliberals argue that rapid liberalization and privatization can transform postcommunist economies into Western‐style capitalist systems. Organizational sociologists argue that these policies produce a unique variety of capitalism, while world‐systems theorists argue that they lead to underdevelopment. This article advances a social structural alternative in a crucial case. Poland's relative economic success resulted from prolonged state ownersh…
Can a bank crisis break your heart
BACKGROUND: To assess whether a banking system crisis increases short-term population cardiovascular mortality rates. METHODS: International, longitudinal multivariate regression analysis of cardiovascular disease mortality data from 1960 to 2002 RESULTS: A system-wide banking crisis increases population heart disease mortality rates by 6.4% (95% CI: 2.5% to 10.2%, p < 0.01) in high income countries, after controlling for economic change, macroec…
Mass privatisation and the post-communist mortality crisis: A cross-national analysis
Is wealthier always healthier? The impact of national income level, inequality, and poverty on public health in Latin America
Understanding the conviction of Binayak Sen: Neocolonialism, political violence and the political economy of health in the central Indian tribal belt
Response to Michael Gentile ‘Mass Privatisation, Unemployment and Mortality’
Mass Privatization, State Capacity, and Economic Growth in Post-Communist Countries
Why did the transition from socialism to capitalism result in improved growth in some countries and significant economic decline in others? Scholars have advanced three main arguments: (1) successful countries rapidly implemented neoliberal policies; (2) failures were not due to policies but to poor institutional environments; and (3) policies were counterproductive because they damaged the state. We present a state-centered theory and empiricall…
The disappearing health effects of rapid privatisation: A case of statistical obscurantism
The Mystery of Missing Female Children in the Caucasus: An Analysis of Sex Ratios by Birth Order
CONTEXT: Official data on sex ratios at birth suggest a rise in sex-selective abortions in some post-Soviet states following the introduction of ultrasonography. However, questions remain about the validity of official data in these nations as well as whether the high sex ratios at birth are a statistical artifact. METHODS: Trends in sex ratios at birth from 1985 to 2009 for 12 post-Soviet states were examined using vital registration data. For t…
Adivasis, Maoists and Insurgency in the Central Indian Tribal Belt
Maoist insurgent or Naxalite activity has expanded markedly in India over the past three decades, especially in the central tribal belt. This paper first uses a unique, district-level dataset to demonstrate that insurgency does not, as is widely argued, occur where tribals or Adivasis have been dispossessed of their land and forced to work as landless labourers. Rather, insurgent activity is most likely to take place in areas where Adivasis retai…
Is wealthier always healthier in poor countries? The health implications of income, inequality, poverty, and literacy in India
The political economy of farmers’ suicides in India: Indebted cash-crop farmers with marginal landholdings explain state-level variation in suicide rates
BACKGROUND: A recent Lancet article reported the first reliable estimates of suicide rates in India. National-level suicide rates are among the highest in the world, but suicide rates vary sharply between states and the causes of these differences are disputed. We test whether differences in the structure of agricultural production explain inter-state variation in suicides rates. This hypothesis is supported by a large number of qualitative studi…
Islamist insurgency and the war against polio: A cross-national analysis of the political determinants of polio
BACKGROUND: There is widespread agreement that civil war obstructs efforts to eradicate polio. It is suggested that Islamist insurgents have a particularly negative effect on vaccination programmes, but this claim is controversial. METHODS: We analyse cross-national data for the period 2003-14 using negative binomial regressions to investigate the relationship between Islamist and non-Islamist insurgency and the global distribution of polio. The …
Catalyzing Aid? The IMF and Donor Behavior in Aid Allocation
Structural adjustment and public spending on health: Evidence from IMF programs in low-income countries
Economics (37 works) · Political science (36 works) · Politics (26 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Economic growth (17 works) · Development economics (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Market economy (13 works) · Medicine (13 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (12 works)