Using a new data set of the telecommunications sector on privatization (1981-98 for 167 countries) and competition policies (1990-98 for roughly 50 countries), this Paper investigates the political economy determinants of privatization and liberalization in the telecommunications sector....

Product and labour market deregulation are fundamentally about reducing and redistributing rents, leading economic players to adjust in turn to this new distribution. Thus, even if deregulation eventually proves beneficial, it comes with strong distribution and dynamic effects. The transition...

This Paper investigates whether the industrial relations climate in Indian states has affected the pattern of manufacturing growth in the period 1958-92. We show that pro-worker amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act are associated with lowered investment, employment, productivity and output...

Using a comprehensive database of firms in Western and Eastern Europe, we study how the business environment in a country drives the creation of new firms. Our focus is on regulations governing entry. We find entry regulations hamper entry, especially in industries that naturally should have...

What determines the enforcement of deregulation reform of business activities? What are the outcomes of deregulation? We address these questions using an episode of a drastic reform in Russia between 2001 and 2004 which liberalized registration, licensing, and inspections. Based on the analysis...

We present new data on the regulation of entry of start-up firms in 85 countries. The data covers the number of procedures, official time, and official cost that a start-up must bear before it can operate legally. The official costs of entry are extremely high in most countries. Countries with...

This paper investigates how enforcement of labour regulation affects the firm's use of informal labour, firm size and firm performance. Using firm level data on employment, capita, and output, census data on informal employment at the city level, and administrative data on enforcement of...

This Paper studies the design of lawmaking and law enforcement institutions based on the premise that law is inherently incomplete. Under incomplete law, law enforcement by courts may suffer from deterrence failure. As a potential remedy, a regulatory regime is introduced. The major functional...

This paper analyses the pattern of state aids to the manufacturing sector in ten EC countries for the period 1981--90. It focuses on determinants suggested by the political economy of state aids. We estimate a regression model where the intensity of state aids is accounted for by the weakness of...

Should arbitrators adjudicate on the basis of their own investigations, or invite the interested parties to make their cases and decide on the basis of the information so gathered? I call the former the inquisitorial procedure in arbitration and the latter the adversarial procedure. I conduct a...