We study how the shadow economy affects pollution and how this effect depends on corruption levels in public administration. Production in the shadow economy allows firms to avoid environmental regulation policies; a large informal sector may be accompanied by higher pollution levels. Our...

"We present a model of shadow banking in which financial intermediaries originate and trade loans, assemble these loans into diversified portfolios, and then finance these portfolios externally with riskless debt. In this model: i) outside investor wealth drives the demand for riskless debt and...

We consider an economy with two groups of individuals, rich and poor. A central authority can either directly redistribute income to the poor, or allow for some degree of informality in economic activities by not enforcing property rights. The optimal degree of informality depends upon the...

Peanuts, Talente oder Tiden: So oder ähnlich heißen die lokalen Währungen, die seit Mitte der neunziger Jahre in Deutschland entstanden sind. Die Mitglieder von Tauschringen nutzen sie, um Waren und Dienstleistungen auszutauschen. Ziel der Tauschringe ist es, eine neue Form erweiterter...

Russia's foreign debt problems worsened substantially after the financial crisis of 1998. The paper focuses on the key role of the government in servicing foreign debt and promoting institution building by showing how foreign debt influences the choice between official and unofficial taxation....