This paper investigates the timing of the impact of changes in checks and balances on macroeconomic efficiency in a panel of countries. Using Battese and Coelli’s one-stage approach, we find that increasing checks and balances results in greater efficiency. Furthermore, the impact of...

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 explore the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in developing countries, distinguishing between mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and Greenfield investment. We find that these two types of FDI differ substantially with respect to their influence on growth. While...

This paper proposes a principal–agent model of labour market discrimination. In this model, the firm manager is a taste-based discriminator and has to make unobservable hiring decisions that determine the shareholder's profits, because workers differ in skill. The model shows that...

This paper studies the relationship between a microfinance institution (MFI) and its credit officers when the latter discriminate against a group of the target population. Using survey data from Uganda, we provide evidence that credit officers are more biased against disabled borrowers than...

This paper proposes a principal-agent model of labour market discrimination. In this model, the firm manager is a taste-based discriminator and has to make unobservable hiring decisions that determine the shareholder’s profits, because workers differ in skill. The model shows that...

This paper aims at discovering the decision rule the Governing Council of the ECB uses to set interest rates. We construct a Taylor rule for each member of the council and for the euro area as a whole, and aggregate the interest rates they produce using several classes of decision-making...

This paper investigates the role of a free press and of the circulation of information on the capacity of a country to declare an exchange regime that is different from the regime it de facto implements. We put forward consistent evidence that increased press freedom and easier access to...

We test the notion that a government may rely less on taxes and more on inflation to finance its expenditures the larger the size of the shadow economy. In a sample of developed and developing countries over the 1999-2007 period, we indeed report a negative relation between the tax burden and...

This paper reports a negative relationship between the size of the shadow economy and generalized trust, in a sample of countries, both developed and developing. That relationship is robust to controlling for a large set of economic, policy, and institutional variables, to changing the estimate...