The main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the recent empirical contributions that use cross-country data to study the effects of product market regulation and reform on a country's macroeconomic performance. After a brief review of the theoretical literature and of...

We model economic decisions as stemming from urges. The magnitude of the urge is a function of previous consumption. Welfare gains from satisfying an urge vary with the nature of the urge. An urge is "dysfuntional" if people are willing to incur costs to stop themselves from gratifying that...