The paper provides evidence of the effects of changes in transport costs on the geographic concentration of industries. The analysis uses micro-level commodity flow data and micro-geographic plant-level data to construct industry-specific ad valorem trucking rates and continuous measures of...

The authors assess the effects of private capital and independent regulatory agencies on telecommunications performance by using cross-country panel data from 1990 to 2003. In general, they find that having independent regulatory agencies positively affects affordability and labor productivity,...

Djibouti is very well placed, as a landing site of undersea fiber optic cables, to benefit from the digital economy. However, the prevalence of a single national telecom operator in the country has stifled service delivery and innovation in the telecom sector. Mobile broadband coverage and...

Many developing countries have experienced significant developments in their telecommunications network. Countries in Africa are no exception to this. The paper examines what factor facilitates most network expansion using micro data from 45 fixed-line and mobile telephone operators in 18...

Although market concentration is one of the main impediments to productivity growth globally, data constraints have limited its analysis to developed countries or cross-country studies based on definitions of market concentration across nations and industries. This paper takes advantage of a...

Does democratization promote economic competition? This paper documents that the disruption of political connections associated with Suharto's fall had a modest pro-competitive effect on Indonesian manufacturing industries in which his family had extensive business interests. Firms with...

This paper uses a unique firm-level data set for Mexico, with information never used for research before, to assess how use of information technology (IT henceforth) influences firm performance. Further, the paper explores if, in the context of increasing competition from China, this effect is...