Studies of the impact of local political risk on foreign direct investment inflows overlook that worldwide FDI comes in waves. Using a simple model we show that the impact of political risk on FDI inflows is likely to be weaker, the larger the worldwide amount of FDI, which may question standard...

This paper assesses the relationship between institutions, output, and productivity when official output is corrected for the size of the shadow economy. Our results confirm the usual positive impact of institutional quality on official output and total factor productivity, and its negative...

This paper tests whether social trust affects total factor productivity (TFP). Using both development and growth accounting, we find strong evidence of a causal positive effect of social trust on the level and growth of TFP. We moreover observe that the effect of social trust on TFP runs through...

"Using a panel of countries over 1990-2000, this paper examines the extent to which different dimensions of the institutional framework affect total exports, exports of manufactured goods, and exports of nonmanufactured goods. It is observed that exports of manufactured goods are positively...

Using a large sample of countries over the 1990s, this paper examines the extent to which institutions' functioning disables a greater participation of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the world economy. It focuses on the impact on manufactured exports and FDI attractiveness and...

We study the volatility of the policy chosen by a committee whose members have volatile preferences. It is smaller than if it was chosen by a single member, smaller the larger the size of the committee, and smaller the volatility of members' preferences.

This paper studies the relationship between the size of the shadow economy and generalized trust, on a cross-section of countries, both developed and developing, and finds that it is significantly negative. That relationship is robust to controlling for a large set of economic, policy, and...

This paper investigates whether financial intermediary development influences macroeconomic technical efficiency on a sample of 47 countries, both developed and developing, over 1980-1995. We do so by applying Battese and Coelli (1995)’s method at the aggregate level. It is found that...