In China, local governments have actively contributed to the growth of new firms. In Russia, local governments have typically stood in the way, be it through taxation, regulation, or corruption. There appears to be two main reasons behind the behavior of local governments in Russia. First,...

Greater job creation in the US than in Germany has often been related to greater wage dispersion coupled with less regulated labour and product markets in the US. Based on the Comparative German American Structural Database and the International Adult Literacy Survey we find that employment of...

Firms hire workers to undertake tasks and activities associated with particular occupations, which makes occupations a fundamental unit in economic analyses of the labor market. Using a unique set of data on pay in identically defined occupations in developing and advanced countries, we find...

We document substantial within-country (cross-municipality) differences in incomes for a large number of countries in the Americas. A significant fraction of the within-country differences cannot be explained by observed human capital. We conjecture that the sources of within-country and...

Djankov et al. (2003a) propose and measure for 109 countries in the year 2000 an index of formalism of legal procedure for two simple disputes: eviction of a non-paying tenant and collection of a bounced check. For a sub-sample of 40 countries, we compute this index every year starting in 1950,...

Is inequality harmful for economic growth? Is the underdevelopment of Latin America related to its unequal distribution of wealth? A recently emerging consensus claims not only that economic inequality has detrimental effects on economic growth in general, but also that differences in economic...

We present insolvency practitioners from 88 countries with an identical case of a hotel about to default on its debt, and ask them to describe in detail how debt enforcement against this hotel will proceed in their countries. We use the data on time, cost, and the likely disposition of the...

Workers have responded differently to declining union density in the US and UK. US workers have unfilled demand for unions whereas many UK workers free-ride at unionized workplaces. To explain this difference, we create a scalar measure of worker needs for representation and relate desire for...

We examine the effect of securities laws on stock market development in 49 countries. We find almost no evidence that public enforcement benefits stock markets, and strong evidence that laws facilitating private enforcement through disclosure and liability rules benefit stock markets