Microfinance institutions, despite the presence of competition and informational asymmetries, typically offer a limited variety of contracts. Assuming price competition, we propose a simple theoretical explanation for this behavior and study its consequences in terms of strategic interaction and...

The paper investigates how efficiency of business environment and corruption (informal payments and state capture) affect the microeconomic performance of firms. The novelty of the paper is to look at these effects in the interaction with the firm ownership. We use firm-level micro data...

Adoption of yieldincreasing technologies is seen as a key driver to increase agricultural production in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is, however, a lack of empirical evidence on the impact of programs aiming to scale-up the adoption of improved technologies from research settings to the farm...

This paper documents that a large fraction of trade flows at the firm level consists of simultaneous imports and exports in identical products, narrowly defined at the 8-digit product classification, which we call Pass-On Trade, POT. We use data on imports and exports at the firm–product level...

“Modern” agricultural markets are characterized by, among other things, quality requirements and vertical coordination. The nature of the industrial organization of the value chain depends on a variety of factors, such as local institutions, economic growth, demand, institutional...

Land regulations have a major impact on economic development, especially in agrarian societies, and they continue to affect the efficiency of the rural economy when economies further develop. This paper aims to give an overview of the regulations that are present in the land market in the EU...

This paper provides evidence on private standards on genetically modified (GM) organisms for 44 retailers operating in 54 countries, distinguishing between retailers not using GM ingredients, and retailers using ingredients which are potentially GM in private label products. Using this...

In developed economies, services form an increasing proportion of inputs employed by manufacturing firms. While downstream firms act in a very competitive environment, services often operate in protected or highly regulated markets. In this paper, I empirically investigate whether the degree of...

The paper develops a composite index of GMO standards restrictiveness for 60 countries, assigning objective scores to six different regulatory dimensions. Using this index and its components, we empirically investigate the political and economic determinants of GMO regulations. Results show that...

Foreign acquisitions are an increasingly important mode of FDI in the new EU member states (NMS). Using ?rm-level data and a common estimation framework for seven NMS we study pre-and post-acquisition performance of acquired ?rms. We ?nd that selection criteria of target ?rms di¤er signi?cantly...