This paper examines the impact of trade and political institutions on environmental quality in Africa and explores whether political institutions matter to the trade-environment relationship. We use data from a large group of African countries, covering the period 1990-2008 and two indicators of...

This study investigates the impact of corruption on public and private investment in African countries as a way of exploring one channel through which corruption undermines growth. The empirical results indicate that corruption affects economic growth directly and through its impact on...

Limited access of entrepreneurs to credit constrains the creation and growth of private firms. In Africa, access to credit is particularly limited for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) due to unclear property rights and the lack of assets that can be used as collateral. This paper presents a...

Motivated in large part by recent economic and financial crises in several high-income donor countries, the emergence of new official donors (such as China), and the increasingly important role of private donors (philanthropy), the quest to identify alternative (or innovative) sources of...

Using macro-level panel data, we examine the effects of taxation and tax progressivity on entrepreneurship in a large group of European countries. We address two main questions. First, we try to explore whether tax increases discourage entrepreneurial activity, focusing on new self-employment...

This paper has two main objectives. First, we examine whether trade can fully explain the differences between Mauritius and Madagascar in development patterns. Second, based on the analysis of trade patterns in the two countries, we outline the main implications for trade between the two African...