We analyze a large stratified random sample of firms that provide us with measures of performance and each firm’s top manager’s perception of the severity of business environment constraints faced by his/her firm. Unlike most existing studies that rely on external and aggregated proxy...

In a field experiment of age discrimination, pairs of men aged twenty-seven and forty-seven, inquired, by email, about employment as waiters in twenty five Spanish towns. Discrimination against the older waiters, corresponded to the highest rates ever recorded anywhere, by written tests, for...

In this paper we present and test a theory of how political corruption, found in many transition and emerging market economies, affects corporate governance and productive efficiency of firms. Our model predicts that underdeveloped democratic institutions that do not punish political corruption...

This article decomposes the observed gaps in educational attainment and school-to-work transitions between grandchildren of natives and immigrants in Belgium into (i) differences in observed family endowments and (ii) a residual "pure ethnic gap". It innovates by explicitly taking delays in...

We evaluate the effectiveness of wage subsidies as a policy instrument to integrate disabled individuals into the labour market. To identify causal effects, we conduct a large-scale field experiment in Belgium. Our results show that the likelihood of a disabled candidate receiving a positive...

We establish that domestically owned firms in two alternative models of emerging market economies, the Czech Republic and Russia, have not been converging to the technological frontier set by foreign owned firms. In both countries, the distance of domestic firms to the frontier grew (in all...

Carefully-matched pairs of written job applications were made to test for age discrimination in hiring. A twenty-one year-old and a thirty-nine year-old woman applied for jobs where a "new graduate" was sought; men aged twenty-seven and forty-seven, inquired about employment as waiters; women...

In a field experiment of age discrimination, pairs of men aged twenty-seven and forty-seven, inquired, by email, about employment as waiters in twenty four French towns. The rate of net discrimination found against the older French waiter, corresponds to the highest rates ever recorded anywhere,...

Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...