This paper is based on large-scale surveys of formal and informal small businesses in South Africa, including questions about their experiences and perceptions about tax compliance, tax morale, and related variables. The survey findings suggest that formalization is more likely to take place in...

This paper analyzes land transactions between municipalities and private businesses based on official data and business surveys in 15 regions of the Russian Federation. Since the Russian Federation passed the new Land Code in 2001, land privatization has been officially encouraged by the federal...

The paper investigates determinants of civic participation in local budget processes in rural areas in the Kyrgyz Republic by using data from the Life in Kyrgyzstan survey, conducted in 2012. The analysis of the data suggests that although civic awareness and interest in local budget processes...

One explanation for Africa's failure to develop is the weakness of its public institutions. The authors consider one aspect of that weakness: rent-seeking and corruption at the top of government. Under the conditions of their model, and autocrat who seeks to maximize personal financial return...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between electronic filing (e-filing) and the total tax compliance costs incurred by small and medium size businesses in developing countries, based on survey data from South Africa, Ukraine, and Nepal. A priori, most observers expect...

The paper uses the latest 2011 round of the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey for the Russian Federation, which for the first time was designed to be representative of Russian regions. The paper takes a closer look at regional-level factors influencing the business...

Building on the pioneering work of Barro (1991) and Mauro (1995) to include the most recent years for which data are available (for Bangladesh in the 1990s), the authors investigate the relationships between corruption, and growth, and, between corruption and investment, both domestic and...

Case studies and anecdotal evidence have suggested that uncertainty about policies, laws, and regulations has hampered development of the private sector in many developing countries. The authors present results from a new cross-country survey that provides comparable data on local...

Economic theory and case study evidence have long suggested that institutional factors, such as well-defined property and contract rights, may be crucial in explaining differences in economic performance across countries. Much of the recent discussion about"governance"has, for example, focused...

Building reliable institutions that support a market system is widely believed to be critical to a successful economic transition. The authors present indicators on the predictability of the institutional framework across twenty transition economies -including indicators of the predictability of...