Economic growth is below what would be needed to resume rapid convergence to average OECD living standards. On-going efforts to improve the business climate are laudable, but need to be widened and strengthened. Much progress has been achieved in reducing red tape, but it is only recently that...

Privatization of services that were formerly provided by governmental agencies has been an important issue for both local and national governments. The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of privatization in the context of the provision of a public good such as street cleaning and...

In a public procurement setting, we discuss the desirability of completing contracts with state-contingent clauses providing for monetary compensations to the contractor when revenue shocks occur. Realized shocks are private information of the contractor and this creates agency costs of...

In a public procurement setting, we discuss the desirability of completing contracts with state-contingent clauses providing for monetary compensations to the contractor when revenue shocks occur. Realized shocks are private information of the contractor and this creates agency costs of...

We investigate the complementarity between informal communities and formal government enforcement of norms of reciprocation and exchange. We introduce a model in which people exchange informally within their community as well as externally on a market. We show that informal community and formal...

Fiskalische Transparenz ist die Offenheit bezüglich der Planung, Formulierung und Implementierung von Finanzpolitik. Fiskalische Transparenz ist nicht nur ein wichtiges Konzept der gegenwärtigen entwicklungspolitischen Diskussion, sondern gleichzeitig ist auch in Ländern der Europäischen...

This paper aims to understand how corruption responds to financial incentives and, in particular, it is an attempt to identify the causal impact of a wage loss on the prevalence of corruption in the education sector. Specifically, we exploit the unexpected wage cut in May 2010 that affected all...

This paper aims to understand how corruption responds to financial incentives and, in particular, it is an attempt to identify the causal impact of a wage loss on the prevalence of corruption in the education sector. Specifically, we exploit the unexpected wage cut in May 2010 that affected all...

In this paper, we examine the causal relationship between aid inflows and economic growth for Ghana during the period from 1970 - 2013, taking into account structural breaks. To better reflect causality, corruption and trade are included as control variables. To test for causality in the face of...

OECD indicators of structural policy show that policy changes in Italy since 1998 should have improved the environment for entrepreneurship significantly, but in the same period its economic performance has deteriorated noticeably. This may be partly because there is a difference between policy...