Using the manufacturing sector data at the three-digit level, the paper examines whether the degree of competition improves productivity in developing countries. The degree of competition is measured through markups while productivity is measured through total factor productivity (TFP) and labor...

The determinants of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows to Arab countries particularly vary depending on what the source country is, i.e. Arab or non-Arab countries. Estimation is conducted on a separate sample for source countries but with the same set of determinants. We found that...

Studies of the impact of local political risk on foreign direct investment inflows overlook that worldwide FDI comes in waves. Using a simple model we show that the impact of political risk on FDI inflows is likely to be weaker, the larger the worldwide amount of FDI, which may question standard...

This paper investigates the timing of the impact of changes in checks and balances on macroeconomic efficiency in a panel of countries. Using Battese and Coelli’s one-stage approach, we find that increasing checks and balances results in greater efficiency. Furthermore, the impact of...

This paper studies the impact of social trust and formal legal institutions on capital accumulation in a panel of countries. The results not only confirm that both social trust and the quality of formal legal institutions have a positive impact on capital accumulation, but also show that they...

We investigate the impact of investment on growth in a sample of 85 developed and developing countries over 1984-2009, conditioning the marginal effect of investment on institutional quality. The panel structure of our dataset allows controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and dealing with the...