This paper tries to uncover some of the hidden factors behind poor public service delivery in the Dominican Republic. By looking at three sector cases, education, health and electricity, it is possible to observe that in this setting of low quality of public services the "middle class" is opting...

This paper explores endogenous institution formation under a catching-up strategy in developing countries. Since the catching-up strategy is normally against the compartive advantages of the developing countries, it can not be implemented through laissez-faire market mechanisms, and a government...

In trying to explain institutional quality, different authors have come to conflicting conclusions. In tackling the problem themselves, the authors show three things. First, openness is positively and pretty robustly associated with institutional quality. To minimize selection bias, the authors...

This paper examines the channels through which alternative property rights institutions affect investment. These institutions are defined by a society's enforced laws, regulations, governance mechanisms and norms concerning the use of resources. A transaction cost framework is used to analyze...

This paper relaxes some key assumptions in the probabilistic approach to fiscal sustainability. First, the authors identify structural breaks over the sample period used to estimate the covariance matrix of the shocks to the debt ratios. Second, the assumption of normality of the shocks is...

This paper contributes to the literature that explores the link between regulatory governance and sector performance. The paper develops an index of regulatory governance and estimates its impact on sector performance, showing that indeed regulation and its governance matter. The authors use two...