How should a policy-maker prioritize interventions to improve the public infrastructure with which firms operate and how large are the benefits from doing so likely to be? To address these questions we use survey data on the obstacles arising from poor quality public inputs that managers face in...

We use data from over 20,000 firms in 60 countries to identify constraints on the growth of firms. We interpret managers’ answers to survey questions on the extent to which various aspects of their external environment inhibit the performance of their firm as measuring the shadow cost of...

Implementing incentive systems can sometimes backfire in practice: experimental evidence and folklore both suggest that offers of explicit rewards can expose surprising discontinuities in behaviour. This Paper models two such discontinuities that have been claimed by psychologists and...

This paper approaches the question of the appropriate level of decentralization of power in government as a problem in the allocation of control rights under incomplete contracts. This approach is preferable to that of the literature following the Tiebout model of local public goods, which...

This paper models how migration both influences and responds to differences in disease prevalence between cities, regions and countries, and show how the possibility of migration away from high-prevalence areas affects long-run steady state disease prevalence. We develop a dynamic framework...

We analyse the major economic issues raised by the 1997 Tobacco Resolution and the ensuing proposed legislation that were intended to settle tobacco litigation in the United States. By settling litigation largely in return for tax increases, the Resolution was a superb example of a "win-win"...

This paper explores implications of the fact that individuals know more than the authorities about their risk of infection and can take migration decisions before their health status is publicly observable. In a 2-period model we study under which conditions the presence of quarantine measures...