Showing 1 - 10 of 166
We use city-industry data from 1890 to 1940 to identify the impact of electricity on manufacturing. We exploit cross-industry variation in pre-electricity energy intensity combined with geographic variation in proximity to early hydroelectric power plants. Labor productivity gains from the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012482295
We examine the long transition from water to steam power in US manufacturing, focusing on early users of mechanical power: lumber and flour mills. Digitizing Census of Manufactures manuscripts for 1850 to 1880, we show that as steam costs declined, manufacturing activity grew faster in counties...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014528423
We use an RCT to analyze the impacts of microcredit. The study population consists of loan applicants who were marginally rejected by an MFI in Bosnia. A random subset of these were offered a loan. We provide evidence of higher self-employment, increases in inventory, a reduction in the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012460122
"Firms in Africa report "regulatory and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to their growth. We argue that often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals; firm-specific policy actions that can be influenced by firm actions (e.g. bribes) and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011394615
Adequate wages are an important tool to shield public officials from special interests and corruption. But what is the … significantly more likely to prevent corruption in public procurement, a key area of illicit interactions between the state and … limit corruption, but also foster the use of violence as an alternative tool to influence policymaking …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014337819
the recent anti-corruption campaign. An analysis of a separate cross-city dataset corroborates the key conclusion …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014372505
arise when monitoring corruption is difficult relative to monitoring the provision of public services, and politically …-important groups of citizens do not bear the full cost of corruption. The existence of such systems can distort the effective incidence … of the tax burden, reduce the incentives of government to fight corruption, and legitimize bribe-taking …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014421219
risk, such as corruption, negatively impacts innovation by reducing R&D expenditure, human capital in R&D, number of …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014512142
We present a simple theory of the quality (competence and honesty) of elected officials. Our theory offers four main insights. Low-quality citizens have a 'comparative advantage' in pursuing elective office, because their market wages are lower than those of high-quality citizens (competence),...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012470186
possibility that some features of FDI host countries, such as bureaucratic corruption, may deter inward FDI, but are positively … explicitly into account corruption level in host countries and using a firm-level data set on investment projects in 24 …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012470253