This paper explores the consequences of creating and improving property rights so that fixed assets can be used as collateral. This has become a cause célèbre of Hernando de Soto whose views are influential in debates about policy reform concerning property rights. Hence, we refer to the...

It is widely recognized that fragile states are key symptoms of under-development in many parts of the world. Such states are incapable of delivering basic services to their citizens and political violence is commonplace. As of yet, mainstream development economics has not dealt in any...

This paper studies individual and social motives in tax evasion. We build a simple dynamic model that incorporates these motives and their interaction. The social motives underpin the role of norms and is the source of the dynamics that we study. Our empirical analysis exploits the adoption in...

Countries with strong executive constraints have lower growth volatility but similar average growth to those with weak constraints. This paper argues that this may explain a strong reduced-form correlation between executive constraints and inflows of foreign investment. It uses a novel dataset...

This paper develops a model where an institutional constraint limits incumbent discretion to prevent adverse policy outcomes. We show that, in this framework, executive constraints have an impact on the mean and variance of policy. This allows us to interpret the empirical observation that...

This Paper investigates whether the industrial relations climate in Indian states has affected the pattern of manufacturing growth in the period 1958-92. We show that pro-worker amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act are associated with lowered investment, employment, productivity and output...

The central question in taxation and development is: "how does a government go from raising around 10% of GDP in taxes to raising around 40%"? This paper looks at the economic and political forces that shape the way that fiscal capacity is created and sustained. As well as reviewing the...

There is a great deal of interest in the causes and consequences of conflict in Africa, one of the poorest areas of the world where only modest economic progess has been made. This paper asks whether post-colonial conflict is, at least in part, a legacy of historical conflict by examining the...

This paper exploits the 2008-09 stamp duty holiday in the United Kingdom to estimate the incidence of a transaction tax on housing. The average reduction in the after-tax sale price is found to be around £900 against the backdrop of an average tax reduction of about £1500. While we estimate an...

While the regulation of tenancy arrangements is widespread in the developing world, evidence on how such regulation influences the long-run allocation of land and labor remains limited. To provide such evidence, this paper exploits quasi-random assignment of linguistically similar areas to...