Simplifying entry regulation has been a popular reform since the publication of Djankov and others (2002). The inclusion of business entry indicators in the World Bank's Doing Business project has led to an acceleration in reform: in 2003–08, 193 reforms took place in 116 countries. A large...

We determine how time delays affect trade, using newly collected data on the days it takes to move standard cargo from the factory gate to the ship in 98 countries. We estimate a difference gravity equation and find that each additional day that a product is delayed prior to being shipped...

We present new data on effective corporate income tax rates in 85 countries in 2004. The data come from a survey, conducted jointly with PricewaterhouseCoopers, of all taxes imposed on "the same" standardized mid-size domestic firm. In a cross-section of countries, our estimates of the effective...

Insolvency practitioners from 88 countries describe how debt enforcement will proceed against an identical hotel about to default on its debt. We use the data on time, cost, and the likely disposition of the assets (preservation as a going concern vs. piecemeal sale) to construct a measure of...

We present a new measure of legal protection of minority shareholders against expropriation by corporate insiders: the anti-self-dealing index. Assembled with the help of Lex Mundi law firms, the index is calculated for 72 countries based on legal rules prevailing in 2003, and focuses on private...

We collect data on the rules and practices of financial and conflict disclosure by members of Parliament in 175 countries. Although two-thirds of the countries have some disclosure laws, less than one-third make disclosures available to the public, and less than one-sixth of potentially useful...

Foreign aid provides a windfall of resources to recipient countries and may result in the same rent seeking behavior as documented in the "curse of natural resources" literature. In this paper, we discuss this effect and document its magnitude. Using panel data for 108 recipient countries in the...

Previous research has interpreted the correlation between per capita income and civil war as evidence that poverty is a main determinant of conflict. In this paper, we find that the relationship between poverty and civil war is spurious and is accounted for by historical phenomena that jointly...