In the light of first-hand data from a Beninese urban household survey in Cotonou, we investigate several motives aiming to explain participation in Rotating Savings and Credit ASsociations. We provide empirical findings which indicate that individuals use their participation in a rosca as a...

The paper distinguishes between the classic or traditional foreign banks with their emphasis on corporate and wholesale banking, and the innovators responding to transition, deregulation or crisis in emerging markets. The innovators come in three varieties—bettors, prospectors and...

The purpose of this paper is to compare the different levels of tax rates on the use of the labour force in a range of OECD countries, using the methodology of effective marginal tax rates. Results for the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Japan, the United...

This paper analyzes a simple model that captures the relationship between institutional quality, the shadow economy and corruption. It shows that an improvement in institutional quality reduces the shadow economy and affects the corruption market. The exact relationship between corruption and...

We estimate output growth rate spectra for 58 countries. The spectra exhibit diverse shapes. To study the sources of this diversity, we estimate the short-run, business cycle, and long-run frequency components of the sampled series. For most OECD countries the bulk of the spectral mass is in the...

The issue of whether government capital is productive has received a great deal of recent attention. Yet empirical analyses of public capital productivity have generally been limited to the official capital stock estimates available in a small sample of countries. Alternatively, many researchers...

The years following the Second World War were those of the greatest economic growth that Europe had ever seen. If the countries of the Iberian Peninsula, neutral in the conflict and ruled by dictatorial regimes, enjoyed that growth and had participated in the convergence phenomenon, Ireland,...

Nigeria is going through a difficult political and economic transition after decades of independence.Yet, Nigeria remains a society rich in cultural, linguistic, religious, ethnic and political diversity. Today, the average Nigerian struggles hard to make ends meet; sees himself or herself as...