Large public bureaucracies are commonly regarded as less efficient than modern private corporations. This paper explores how the degree of discretionary power might account for this difference in efficiency. Indeed, increasing the discretionary power of the intermediate layers of an organization...

Expanding credit access is a key ingredient of development strategies worldwide. Microfinance practitioners, policymakers, and donors have ambitious goals for expanding access, and seek efficient methods for implementing and evaluating expansion. There is less consensus on the role of consumer...

This paper analyses the return intentions of migrant workers. An intertemporal model is developed where the point of return to the home country is endogenous. The analysis emphasizes three explanations of why it should be optimal to migrate only temporarily: differences in relative prices in the...

This paper studies optimal dynamic tax policy under the threat of political reform. A policy will be reformed ex post if a large enough political coalition supports reform; thus, sustainable policies are those that will continue to attract enough political support in the future. We find that...

This paper studies the consumption decisions of agents who face costs of acquiring, absorbing and processing information. These consumers rationally choose to only sporadically update their information and re-compute their optimal consumption plans. In between updating dates, they remain...

Building on the idea that religious communities provide mutual insurance against some idiosyncratic risks, we argue that religious membership is more valuable in societies exposed to greater common risk. In our empirical analysis we exploit rainfall risk as a source of common economic risk in...

Simplifying entry regulation has been a popular reform since the publication of Djankov et al (2002). The inclusion of business entry indicators in the World Bank’s Doing Business project has led to an acceleration in reform: in 2003-2008, 193 reforms took place in 116 countries. A large...

Many resource-rich countries have poor economic performance and suffer from negative genuine saving rates, especially if they have many rival factions and badly functioning legal systems. We attempt to shed light on these stylized facts by analyzing a power struggle about the control of natural...