The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), established in 1988, is part of the World Bank Group. Its mandate is to promote foreign investment in its member countries by providing political risk insurance and technical assistance to promote investment. In developing this case study of...

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...

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,...

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...

Touted as an important commitment device that attracts foreign investors, the number of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) ratified by developing countries has grown dramatically. The author tests empirically whether BITs have actually had an important role in increasing the foreign direct...

In an earlier paper, the authors presented a mathematical exposition of a theory that demonstrated that mass privatization without institutions to limit asset-stripping may not lead to a demand for the rule of law ["After the Big Bang? Obstacles to the Emergence of the Rule of Law in...

The authors use a sample of 147 countries to investigate the link between democracy and reforms. Democracy may be conducive to reforms, because politicians have the incentive to embrace growth-enhancing reforms to win elections. By contrast, authoritarian regimes do not have to worry as much...

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...