Which incentives have the strongest impact on the size of the shadow economy? Is it about government's pressure against entrepreneurs operating in this sector, or is it about the benefits of legality? The goal of this paper is to explicitly contrast the role of sticks (court repressiveness) and...

Although there is growing recognition that many entrepreneurs start-up trading partially or wholly off-the-books, few have evaluated whether the character of this hidden enterprise culture varies spatially. To begin to do so, this paper evaluates whether and how the nature of off-the-books...

Political budget cycles are a well-established phenomenon in which opportunistic politicians systematically adjust public policies prior to elections in order to attract a higher number of votes. We show that corrupt behavior of politicians also follows certain patterns, which are driven by...