A well-functioning justice system is indispensable to business activity and to a society as a whole. Judicial efficiency measured by trial length, one of the essential factors in the effectiveness of the justice system, ensures contract enforcement, which is the basis of market transactions....

Combining existing information with a newly collected dataset, the paper develops indicators of the performance and the institutional characteristics of OECD judicial systems. It provides cross-country comparisons of measures of trial length, accessibility to justice services and predictability...

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the “resource curse” phenomenon, i.e. the negative impact of oil abundance on long-term economic growth, for a set of oil exporting countries. It distinguishes between two potential drivers of resource courses: oil dependence and oil price...

A great deal of research in psychology and policy studies has demonstrated that when citizens feel fairly treated in their encounters with government agencies, they are more likely to accept and comply with regulatory rules and decisions, to feel included in society and to trust their...

Illicit financial flows (IFFs) in West Africa have long contributed to the region’s instability, partly due to their links to regional terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). AQIM has directly and indirectly participated in and perpetuated illicit financial...

This paper explores the flow of illicit narcotics transiting West Africa. It is divided into four sections, providing an overview of the nature and scope of the illicit narcotic economy, the networks and actors involved and its development impacts, including its resulting illicit financial...

Illicit trade in goods that displace normally legal goods is an extensive global problem, which carries considerable development risks and losses for developing countries. Focusing on pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and consumer goods (which in itself consists of a broad range of goods), this...

The goal of this paper is to analyze the behavior of digital music consumers on the Internet. Using clickstream data on a panel of more than 16,000 European consumers, we estimate the effects of illegal downloading and legal streaming on the legal purchases of digital music. Our results suggest...

Taking down copyright-infringing websites is a way to reduce consumption of pirated media content and increase licensed consumption. We analyze the consequences of the shutdown of the most popular German video streaming website - kino.to - in June 2011. Using individual-level clickstream data,...

Streaming music services have exploded in popularity in the past few years, variously raising optimism and concern about their impacts on recorded music revenue. On the one hand, streaming services allow sellers to engage in bundling with the promise of increasing revenues, profits, and consumer...