Motivated by the lack of sub-national empirical evidence on the relationship between aid and institutional development, this study explores the local effects of World Bank aid on perceived institutional quality in African aid receiving countries. We combine geo-referenced data on the subnational...

Contracts between governments and international firms are difficult to enforce, especially under weak institutions: governments are tempted to renegotiate tax payments after investments occurred. Theoretically, such a hold-up problem is solved by using selfenforcing agreements that increase the...

The standard economic analysis of the insured-insurer relationship under moral hazard postulates a simplistic setup that hardly explains the many features of an insurance contract. We extend this setup to include the situation that the insured was facing at the time of the accident and the...

Contracts between governments and international firms are difficult to enforce, especially under weak institutions: governments are tempted to renegotiate tax payments after investments occurred. Theoretically, such a hold-up problem is solved by using selfenforcing agreements that increase the...

In the Grossman-Hart-Moore property rights theory, there are no frictions ex post (i.e., after non-contractible investments have been sunk). In contrast, in transaction cost economics ex-post frictions play a central role. In this note, we bring the property rights theory closer to transaction...

This paper attempts to formalize the transaction cost theory of the firm. Building on the formal approach of Grossman and Hart (1986), a model is developed to capture the essential elements of the transaction cost theory, particularly those that are distinct from the formal property rights...

Marriage is often compared to a "contract." The contract analogy appears to be an argument about the law of marriage based on a settled concept called "contract." But it is in fact an assertion of a contested view of "contract": that legitimate obligation must derive from consent. This focus on...

This paper examines whether developing countries receiving more foreign aid also have higher rates of urbanization. After presenting a simple theoretical model, empirical work is conducted on a cross-section of countries during the 1990s. The paper finds that foreign aid is positively associated...

Donors who try to impose policy conditionality on countries receiving their aid commonly face confflicting incentives between using aid to induce income-increasing reforms and using aid to assist low-income countries: this confflict can lead to a time-consistency problem. This paper o¤ers a...

This study estimates an aid-growth model and an aid-fiscal model to quantify the effects of foreign aid on GDP growth and fiscal behavior in Bangladesh over the 1973-1999 period. The aid-growth model applies the cointegration method to a neoclassical growth model and finds that aid has marginal...