In 2008, an opposition coalition defeated the Paraguayan Colorado Party, which had been in power for 61 years, including 35 years of the longest dictatorship in South America. Using data of all the public procurement transactions from 2004 through 2011 and the political connections of the 700...

Many developing countries are unable to provide their industrial sector with reliable electric power and many enterprises have to contend with insufficient and unreliable electricity supply. Because of these constraints, enterprises often opt for self-generation even though it is widely...

A standard view holds that removing barriers to entry and improving judicial enforcement would reduce informality and boost investment and growth. We show, however, that this conclusion may not hold in countries with a concentrated bank- ing sector or with low financial openness. When the formal...

Since the 1980s, privatization of formerly state-owned firms has been extensively implemented by governments across Latin America. Despite the fact that most evaluations of the process fail to find significant adverse welfare effects, there has been a strong surge in public discontent with such...

A model of entrepreneurial choices in an economy with a corrupt public procurement sector is built, providing predictions along two main dimensions. First, corruption is more frequent in sectors where public institutions are large buyers. Second, firms favoured with corrupt contracts enjoy extra...

We analyze how uncertainty regarding future climate conditions affects the design of concession contracts, organizational forms and technological choices in a principal-agent context with dynamic moral hazard, limited liability and irreversibility constraints. The prospect of future, uncertain...