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'...

The Commonwealth of Virginia abolished parole and reformed sentencing for all felony of- fenders committed on or after January 1, 1995. We examine the impact of this legislation on reported crime rates using different time series approaches. In particular, structural time series models are...

Basing-point pricing is known to have been abused by geographically dispersed firms in order to eliminate competition on transportation costs. This paper develops a topographic test for collusive basing-point pricing. The method uses transaction data (prices, quantities) and customer project...

This paper develops a model in which individuals gain social status among their peers for being 'tough' by committing violent acts. We show that a high penalty for moderately violent acts (zero-tolerance) may yield a double dividend in that it reduces both moderate and extreme violence. The...

Intuitively, extending the period of repose for price fixing agreements enhances the effectiveness of competition policy enforcement. This paper proofs this intuition wrong. As extending the repose period reduces cartel members' defection payoff while it leaves unaltered expected compliance...