The authors estimate social rates of return to electricity-generating capacity and paved roads, relative to the return on general capital, by examining the effect on aggregate output and comparing that effect with the costs of construction. They find that both types of infrastructure capital are...

The authors evaluate whether the level of development in the banking sector exerts a causal impact on economic growth and its sources-total factor productivity growth, physical capital accumulation, and private saving. They use (1) a pure cross-country instrumental variable estimator to extract...

The authors use a computable general equilibrium model of the Russian economy to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which encompasses improved market access, tariff reduction, and reduction of barriers against multinational service providers. They assume that...

The link between economic growth, and better provision of infrastructure services may be unproven, but it is clear that reforms to make infrastructure services more competitive (where possible), and to provide strong, and independent economic regulation of natural monopolies, do create an...

In any economic environment where decisions are decentralized, agents consider the risk that others might unfairly exploit informational asymmetries to their own disadvantage. Incomplete results, especially, lies at the heart of financial transactions in which agents trade real claims for...

An understanding of corporate governance theory can promote the adoption of appropriate governance tools to limit agency problems in public pension fund management. The absence of a market for corporate control hinders the translation of lessons from the private sector corporate world to public...

In an economy where decisions are decentralized and made under conditions of uncertainty, the financial system can be seen as the complex of institutions, infrastructure, and instruments that society adopts to minimize the costs of trading promises when agents have incomplete trust and limited...

One of the best documented empirical facts in economic research has been the positive relationship between internal finance and cash flows and capital expenditures and investment. But disputes about the analytical basis for the cash flow theory have been largely unresolved. There are two...

Economists often characterize the regulation of monopolies as a"game"(between the regulator and the service provider) in which the two players do not share the same information. The regulator is assumed to have poorer information than the service provider about the scope of future efficiency...

The relationship between the financial, and real sides of the economy has long been a topic of intense interest, and debate. The author provides microeconomic evidence that financial development aids growth, by reducing financing constraints that would otherwise restrict efficient firm...