This study measures the costs to obtain legal permission to operate small firms in Brazil. Small garment businesses have been chosen due to their relevance for developing countries, and also because the same sector has been studied elsewhere. One hundred firms have been surveyed using the costs...

Three hundred small tomato growers located in Brazilian northeast states, supplied a processing industry. In view of the large number of contract hazards and weak enforcement of clauses, managers have decided to move to the Midwest, where a reduced number of larger farmers have been contracted....

Most empirical studies in contracting have analyzed contract length within an ex ante focus, when agents pre-specify the desired duration of the transaction as a contractual clause. The present study focuses on contract duration as defined ex post, meaning that the survival of contractual...