The extent of bureaucracy varies extensively across countries, but the quality of bureaucracy within a country changes more slowly than economic policies. The authors propose that the quality of bureaucracy may be an important structural determinant of open economy macroeconomic policies -...

This study investigates the effects of the World Bank's exogenously-determined income threshold for eligibility for concessionary International Development Association (IDA) loans on the allocations of bilateral donors. The donors might interpret the World Bank's policies and allocations across...

Although previous research has demonstrated the health benefits of water treatment programs, relatively little is known about the effect of water treatment on education. This paper examines the educational benefits to rural youth in China of a major drinking water treatment program started in...

China is now the world's largest destination of foreign direct investment (FDI), despite assessments highlighting its institutional deficiencies. But this FDI inflow corresponds closely to predicted FDI flows into China from a model that predicts FDI inflow based on government quality indicators...

While the literature on consumption insurance is growing fast, little research has been conducted on how rural consumption insurance is affected by democracy. In this paper the authors examine how consumption insurance of Chinese rural residents is affected if the local leader is democratically...

This paper develops a self-enforcing contract model to show that better economic fundamentals can help when there is weak rule of law -- but with order -- to attract foreign direct investment, whereas lowering taxes does not necessarily help. Using a cross-region Chinese dataset, the analysis...

This paper examines the role of firms'government connections, defined by government intervention in the appointments of Chief Executive Officers and the status of state ownership, in determining the severity of financial constraints faced by Chinese firms. In line with the previous literature,...

This paper uses data from a large survey of Chinese firms to investigate whether local government efforts to facilitate market development improve firm efficiency. Both government provision of information about products, markets, and innovation and government assistance in arranging loans are...

The literature on aid and growth has not found a convincing instrumental variable to identify the causal effects of aid. This paper exploits an instrumental variable based on the fact that since 1987, eligibility for aid from the International Development Association (IDA) has been based partly...

This paper uses a unique natural experiment in Chinese villages to investigate whether access to telecommunications-- in particular, landline phones -- increases the likelihood of outmigration. By using regional and time variations in the installation of landline phones, the...