We study an important mechanism underlying employee referrals into informal low skilled jobs in developing countries. Employers can exploit social preferences between employee referees and potential workers to improve discipline. The profitability of using referrals increases with referee stakes...

Access to external finance for small and medium enterprises is vital for survival and growth of such firms. In this paper we have analyzed the determinants of access to credit in microenterprises of Turkey. We use a unique dataset covering a large sample of microenterprises. We find that size...

We model the organizational choice of a small firm given formal and informal credit market parameters. We observe a positive relationship between the size of the informal sector and the spread across countries. We take spread as relative inefficiency of the formal credit markets. Furthermore we...

The world is experiencing its worst recession in 80 years. What started as US sub-prime financial turmoil has developed into the first global recession since the infamous "Great Depression" of the early 1930s. However gloomy the perspectives for the very short term are, there will be a recovery...

How do government-supplied institutional benefits and the taxation and regulation of produc- ers affect the propensity of private firms to enter the unofficial economy and evade taxation? We propose a model in which the incentive of firms to operate underground depends on tax rates relative to...

The income of the self-employed is often assumed to be understated in economic statistics. Debate exists about the extent of under-reporting and the resulting measures of the size of the underground economy. This paper refines a method developed by Pissarides and Weber (1989) and uses...

This paper investigates the hypothesis that the association between property rights institutions and income is weaker in countries with high social divisions. It argues that social divisions should have a negative effect on perceived institutional inclusiveness, which in turn should depress...

A key event in economic history was the independence of nearly ninety former colonies after World War II. On the basis of qualitative and quantitative evidence, we argue that independence often constituted an institutional disequilibrium that the new regimes reacted to in very different ways. We...

This paper represents the first attempt to formalise the relationship between remittances inflow and social violence by developing a model which predicts that migrants’ remittances would lead to the reduction of social conflict in the recipient economy under the condition that remittances...

We offer a theory that sheds light on the current debate over whether the form of corporate ownership converges to the Berle-Means image. Our analytical results are threefold. First, legal rules and firm-specific protective arrangements are complementary. Secondly, corporate ownership patterns...