Showing 1 - 10 of 19
This paper investigates corruption and tax evasion and their firm-level determinants across 25,000 firms in 57 countries, a large fraction of which are small and medium enterprises in developing countries. Firms that pay more bribes also evade more taxes. Corruption acts as a tax on innovation,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012551605
This paper reviews and synthesizes theoretical and empirical research on the role of finance in developing countries. First, the paper presents the stylized facts about firms in developing nations as well as the legal, financial and broader institutional framework in which these firms operate....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012552140
This paper discusses mechanisms of grand corruption in private sector utility provision in developing countries. By the term "grand corruption," the authors abstract from the petty corruption that consumers experience - for example, when firms and individuals pay bribes to get water delivery or...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012552242
The paper presents a major overhaul to the World Bank's past estimates of global poverty, incorporating new and better data. Extreme poverty-as judged by what "poverty" means in the world's poorest countries-is found to be more pervasive than we thought. Yet the data also provide robust evidence...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012552245
The authors report new estimates of measures of absolute poverty for the developing world over 1981-2004. A clear trend decline in the percentage of people who are absolutely poor is evident, although with uneven progress across regions. They find more mixed success in reducing the total number...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012552660
The construction industry accounts for about one-third of gross capital formation. Governments have major roles as clients, regulators, and owners of construction companies. The industry is consistently ranked as one of the most corrupt: large payments to gain or alter contracts and circumvent...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012552721
The authors provide new evidence on the extent to which absolute poverty has urbanized in the developing world, and the role that population urbanization has played in overall poverty reduction. They find that one-quarter of the world's consumption poor live in urban areas and that the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012552774
Microfinance contracts have proven able to secure high rates of loan repayment in the face of limited liability and information asymmetries, but high repayment rates have not translated easily into profits for most microbanks. Profitability, though, is at the heart of the promise that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012553653
Workers' remittances to developing countries have become the second largest type of flows after foreign direct investment. The authors use data on workers' remittance flows to 99 developing countries from 1975-2003 to study the impact of remittances on financial sector development. In...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012553779
There are significant weaknesses in some of the traditional justifications for assuming that aid will foster development. This paper looks at what the cross-country aid effectiveness literature and World Bank Operations Evaluation Department reviews have suggested about effective aid, first in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012553827