This paper tests whether corruption may be an efficient grease in the wheels of an otherwise deficient institutional framework. It analyzes the interaction between aggregate efficiency, corruption, and other dimensions of governance for a panel of 69 countries, both developed and developing....

We analyze how adding the shadow economy to official output figures affects estimated technical efficiency at the country level. We find that this only slightly affects the ranking of efficiency scores, but increases average efficiency in a sample of 87 to 97 countries, both developed and...