In an environment in which bureaucratic burden and delay are exogenous, an individual firm may find bribes helpful to reduce the effective red tape it faces. The efficient grease' hypothesis asserts therefore that corruption can improve economic efficiency and that fighting bribery would be...

We model mortgage refinancing as a bargaining game involving the borrowing household, the incumbent lender, and an outside bank. In equilibrium, the borrower's ability to refinance depends both on the competitiveness of the local banking market and on the cost of switching banks. We find...