The main purpose of a legislative framework for petroleum development is to provide the basic context for, and the rules governing, petroleum operations in the host country; to regulate them, as they are carried out by domestic foreign, and international enterprises; and to define the principal...

In the globalizing economy, national policymakers are often forced to accept the challenge of financial integration. Faced with the potentially destabilizing effects of international financial markets, they have to strengthen financial regulation, importing international best practices and...

The author reviews the overwhelming statistical evidence that countries with high levels of corruption experience poor economic performance. Corruption hinders economic development by reducing domestic investment, discouraging foreign direct investment, encouraging overspending in government,...

This paper studies the economic effects of legal amendments on different types of labor laws. It examines the effects of amendments to labor dispute laws and amendments to job security legislation. It also identifies the effects of legal amendments related to the most contentious regulation of...

While existing literature has examined the impact of intellectual property protection on the volume of foreign direct investment (FDI), little is known about its effect on the composition of FDI inflows. The author addresses this question empirically, using a unique firm-level data set from...

The concept of the informal sector (IS) has recently received widespread and growing attention. Indeed, it may be fair to talk about a re-emergence of the concept in the debate related to social protection and poverty reduction. We argue that with this new found prominence, it is even more...

Ten years into the transition, corruption is so pervasive that it could jeopardize the best-intentioned reform efforts. The authors present an analytical framework for examining the role market institutions play in rent-seeking and illicit behavior. Using recently available data on the incidence...

Using a unique firm-level survey data base, covering fifty four countries, the authors investigate whether different financial, legal, and corruptionissues that firms report as constraints, actually affect their growth rates. The results show that the extent to which these factors constrain a...

Using global data for the period 1960-99, the authors estimate neighborhood arms races. They find that the level of military expenditure is strongly influenced by the expenditure of neighbors. The authors estimate an"arms race multiplier,"finding that an initial exogenous increase in military...

The recent literature on law and finance has drawn attention to the importance of creditor rights in influencing the development of financial systems and in affecting firm corporate governance and financing patterns. Recent financial crises have also highlighted the importance of insolvency...