Growth empirics with institutional measures is performed for 25 transition countries over the period 1990-95. Estimation results suggest that (particularly state) institutions are significant for growth and, especially, foreign direct investment (FDI), the latter in turn being important for the...

The main goal of this study is two-fold: (1) to provide a general overview of the contributions to the literature on the informal sector, with a special focus on the Public Choice approach; and (2) to compare these contributions across two institutionally different types of countries: developed...

The obligation to pay bride wealth at marriage is usually associated with the continuation of the lineage or considered a compensation for the loss of labor for the family that provides the bride. In this paper a different interpretation is advanced. The obligation to pay of bride wealth is seen...

It is often assumed that transfers received from governments, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), friends and relatives help rural households to pool risk. In this paper I investigate two functions of transfers in Ethiopia: risk pooling and income redistribution. Unlike most of the literature...

Existing studies show a positive relationship between entrepreneurs' business performance and their conventional human capital as measured by previous business experience and formal education. In this paper, we explore whether illegal entrepreneurship experience (IEE), an unconventional form of...

A series of experiments in Albania and the Netherlands give us the opportunity to compare behavioral patterns related to tax evasion. Subjects have to decide between a random 'registered' income, the realization of which will be known to the experimenter for sure, and a random 'unregistered'...

Urban re-development projects may generate various positive as well as negative spatial externalities to the existing population in a given area. This study aims to assess the order of magnitude of the expected net benefits for incumbent residents from a large scale project in the Southern part...

Industrial sites cause several negative externalities, such as traffic noise disturbance, congestion, and obstruction of view. In order to quantify the negative effects stemming from industrial sites, we estimate – using a hedonic pricing model – the impact of distance to industrial sites on...

This paper addresses the question to what extent the performance of industrial sites is affected by their local economic structure and accessibility. For this aim, we test for the existence of statistically significant relationships between agglomeration externalities (specialization, diversity,...

The topic of convergence is at the heart of a wide-ranging debate in the growth literature. Empirical studies of convergence differ widely in their theoretical backgrounds, empirical specifications and in their treatment of cross-sectional heterogeneity. Despite these differences, a rate of...