This paper addresses the issue of causality in the relationship between various types of institutions—namely, political and economic freedom—and long-run economic growth. It is shown that existing empirical studies of these relationships provide evidence of correlation, but not causation. Granger causality tests of freedom vs. growth, and freedom vs. investment are conducted using aggregate mea...

Shadow Economies and Corruption All Over the World: What Do We Really Know? Estimations of the size and development of the shadow economy for 145 countries, including developing, transition and highly developed OECD economies over the period 1999 to 2003 are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (as a percent of “official” GDP) in 2002/03 in 96 developing countries is 38.7%, in 25 t...

The aim of this paper is to understand the impact of optimal provision of both risk and incentives on the choice of contracting partners. I study a risky setting where heterogeneously risk-averse employers and employees must match to be productive. They face a standard onesided moral hazard problem: mean output increases in the noncontractible input of the employee. Better insurance comes at th...

The colonial experience of developing countries provides valuable evidence regarding the impact of legal and institutional innovations on economic growth. However, there has been little effort by economists to study colonial policies to gain theoretical insights into the process of institutional reform. This paper considers the introduction of civil courts in colonial India and its impact on ag...

Using a simple two-firm, two-period model, we analyze for a developing economy the process of entrepreneurial entry, that is, entry by new firms into an industry that did not previously exist in that country, focusing on the choice between formal and informal status. Thus we explore issues such as how informality may enable an entrepreneur to test the profitability of an industry without incurr...

We consider the selection properties of a competitive bribery model in the presence of two types of asymmetry: unevenness between the competitors and unfairness in the contest rules. Only under very special conditions does the benchmark model yield allocation efficiency; in other cases, the effect on allocation efficiency of making the contest more unfair is ambiguous and parameter specific. We...

The aim of this paper is to study the relationship between the shadow economy and corruption as determinants of public debt in the Spanish Autonomous Communities. In addition, we construct a Corruption Perception Index for those regions. Our data constitute panel data for the period 2000–2012. The results show that the volume of the shadow economy has a significant and positive impact on region...

A model of “harassment bribes,” paid for services one is entitled to, is developed to analyze the proposal to legalize paying these bribes while increasing fines on accepting them. We explore performance as regards corruption deterrence and public service provision. Costs of verifying reports make the scheme more effective against larger bribes and where institutions’ quality is higher. A modif...

This paper reconsiders the predominant typology pioneered by Baumol (1990) among productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship. It is shown that the foundation of Baumol’s classificatory scheme is the restrictive concept of first-best outcomes, and therefore it easily fails to appreciate the true impact of entrepreneurship in real world circumstances characterized by suboptimal inst...