India and China are the two emerging economic giants of the developing world, both situated in Asia with 37% of world population (Asian Development Outlook2005) and with more than 9% growth in their respective GDP of their economies (World Development Report 2006). China got independence in...

A long-standing deterrent to foreign direct investment in developing countries is weak enforcement of binding contracts. A local firm may learn business skills from a cooperating multinational firm and subsequently do business on its own based on the acquired skills. In a two-period...

The paper examines why capital didn't flow from the rich to the poor. The problems identified are categorized in three broad categories: lack of complementary human capital, information asymmetries and transaction costs for small loan sizes. It explains how moneylenders solve the information...

A long-standing deterrent to foreign direct investment in developing countries is weak enforcement of binding contracts. A local firm may learn business skills from a cooperating multinational firm and subsequently do business on its own based on the acquired skills. In a two-period...

We study whether bank efficiency is related to bank ownership in Russia. We find that foreign banks are more efficient than domestic private banks and - surprisingly - that domestic private banks are not more efficient than domestic public banks. These results are not driven by the choice of...

Corporate governance has received an increasing amount of attention in recent years. Corporate scandals have brought corporate governance weaknesses to the attention of the general public, especially in the United States. But corporate governance is sometimes a problem in other countries as...