The Regulatory Policy Scan of Bulgaria assesses the country’s regulatory management capacity by taking stock of regulatory policies, institutions and tools, describing trends and recent developments, and identifying gaps in relation to good practices. Improving the entire regulatory policy...

This paper examines the impact of start-up regulations and institutional quality on the level of new business activity in a panel of 119 countries between 2001 and 2012. We find robust evidence that new business creation is significantly lower in countries with excessive barriers to entry, a...

Does the design of a tax matter for growth? Assembling a novel dataset for 30 OECD countriesover the 1970-2016 period, this paper examines whether the value added tax (VAT) may havedifferent effects on long-run growth depending on whether it is raised through the standard rateor through...

The U.S. economy is growing more slowly than it can and should be growing because it does not invest enough in infrastructure, science, and education. There is an important procedural obstacle to funding public investments — a process of scoring the economic effect of legislation. This process...

A trade war between the United States and China resulted in an increase in trade tariffs on imported goods entering each of these countries. Southeast Asian countries that have trade relations with the two countries, especially in terms of non-oil and gas exports of 25% to 35%, will be affected...

This paper investigates the relationship between economic freedom and income growth and inequality across U.S. states over the period 1979 to 2011. The focus is on market income at the top and bottom of the income distribution. Results show that increases in overall freedom are associated with...

To understand the weak empirical relationship between human capital and macroeconomic performance, this paper presents a model in which human capital is allocated to three activities: production, tax collection (bureaucracy), and public education. The effective tax rate is low in poor countries...