Over the last twenty years piracy has become an increasing threat. Yet there are only very few econometric studies that examine under which conditions this phenomenon arises. As the number of maritime piracy and armed robbery incidents is characterized as count data and exhibits overdispersion,...

In this paper, we investigate the impacts of the institutional environment and the entrepreneur’s education on firm growth in Vietnam. Using a firm-level dataset, we obtain a balanced panel data from 2006 to 2009 for 37,788 registered enterprises from a unique data set. We analyze the effects...

This contribution tests for causality between financial deepening, trade openness and economic development for 16 Sub-Saharan African countries. An advanced econometric methodology is used to add to existing empirical evidence. Only limited support is found for finance promoting regional...

In this paper, we investigate the role of the social network nexus and the insurance nexus in determining household savings and productive capital formation in rural Vietnam. We analyze the issue in two dimensions, stocks and flows, and consider the exposure to negative shocks. The instrumental...

This paper estimates the income effect of non productivity related discriminatory factors, compared to productivity related returns on human capital in Shenzhen. The design of the Shenzhen Household Survey 2005 that was employed enables us to include a large set of discriminating factors in a...

At any moment a student may decide to leave school and enter the labor market, or stay in the education system. The time of departure from school determines their level of academic achievement and formal qualification. Therefore, the major purpose of this paper is to derive a timing rule for...

We propose that the rate of creation and failure of new firm start-ups can be modelled as a search and matching process, as in labor market matching models. Deriving an "entrepreneurial" Beveridge curve, we show that a successful start-up depends on the efficiency with which entrepreneurial...

During the last 40 years the number and severity of economic, natural, and political disasters has significantly increased all over the world. Disasters are characterized by a highly uncertain frequency of occurrence and size of impact. Due to their relatively small probability, for a long time...

The assessment and alleviation of poverty remains an urgent question throughout the globe. Urban poverty, in particular is becoming more prevalent in China due to immense migration in recent years. To what extent is migration related to poverty, and do the factors that drag households into...