We study the relationship between the underground economy and financial development in a model of tax evasion and bank intermediation. Agents with heterogenous skills seek loans in order to undertake risky investment projects. Asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders implies a menu...

Empirical observation suggests that not all countries of the world have suffered as a result of widespread corruption. Whilst many countries have undoubtedly been damaged considerably, others appear to have coped well - in some cases, very well - with the problem. The analysis that follows seeks...

We are grateful to Denise Osborn and Eric Renault for valuable comments and to Nikolaos Sakkas for assistance with the computations. The paper has also benefited from the comments of a co-editor and three anonymous referees. An earlier version of this paper was circulated under the title...

This paper assesses quantitatively the impact of legal institutions on entrepreneurial firm dynamics. Owners choose firm size, financial structure and default to manage risk. We find: (i) Less risk averse entrepreneurs run bigger firms and it is optimal for them to incorporate, while more risk...

In this paper, we present a limiting distribution theory for the break point estimator in a linear regression model with multiple structural breaks obtained by minimizing a Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) objective function. Our analysis covers both the case in which the reduced form for the...

This paper studies interactions between innovation, public capital, and human capital in an OLG model of endogenous growth. Public capital affects growth through productivity, the diffusion rate of new technologies, innovation capacity, and human capital accumulation. Panel data regressions show...