We study the emergence and interaction of red tape and corruption in a principal–bureaucrat– agent hierarchy. The principal is to provide the agent with a unit of a good that involves externalities so that market mechanisms fail to achieve first best. Red tape produces information but is costly to the agent and is administered by a corrupt bureaucrat. First, the bureaucrat may extort bribes fro...

The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. There is increasing recognition that corruption has substantial, adverse effects on economic growth. But if the costs of corruption are so hi...

Pension Design with a Large Informal Labor Market: Evidence from Chile This paper investigates empirically the fiscal and welfare trade-offs involved in designing a pension system when workers can avoid participation by working informally. A dynamic behavioral model captures a household’s labor supply, formal/informal sector choice and saving decisions under the rules of Chile’s canonical priva...

It is difficult to find, at a glance, a clear connection between corruption and the reform processes in the states of the former Soviet Union (FSU). The key to untangling this issue is to look at the peculiarities of their transition strategies and economic crisis compared with those of Central and Eastern European countries. This paper aims to unravel the complex ties between the transition pr...

We analyze, both theoretically and empirically, the influence of direct democratic institutions on the size and development of shadow economies. Our model suggests that, as the extent of direct democracy increases, implemented fiscal policies more nearly reflect the preferences of citizens and so reduce their incentives to operate in the informal sector. This theory implies a negative relations...

We examine the impact of economic deregulation on employer evasion of union-mandated ‘formal’ wage-contracts in an import-competing industry. We show that, if the state maintains industrial employment despite import liberalisation, through cheaper credit to firms, then employer evasion will increase, due to a rise in the formal-informal wage gap. Institutional delays in punishment of employer e...

This study explores the importance of cross-border social networks for entrepreneurship in developing countries by examining ties between the Indian expatriate community and local entrepreneurs in India’s software industry. We find that local entrepreneurs who are based in cities with weaker formal institutions rely significantly more on diaspora networks for business leads and financing. Relyi...

This paper o¤ers a bridge between the theoretical literature on endogenous network formation and the empirical work on the impact of social networks on economic performance. We provide a theoretical framework of endogenous network formation that yields testable predictions for the network architectures generated by a particular informal institution common in village economies. We test the impli...

This paper discusses the literature on the enforcement of incomplete contracts. It compares legal enforcement to enforcement via relationships and reputations. A number of mechanisms, such as the repeat purchase mechanism (Klein and Le er (1981)) and e ciency wages (Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984)), have been o ered as solutions to the problem of enforcing an incomplete contract. It is shown that t...

Comparative Advantage, Segmentation and Informal Earnings: A Marginal Treatment Effects Approach This paper employs recently developed econometric models of marginal treatment effects to analyze the relevance of labor market comparative advantage and segmentation in the participation and earnings performance of workers in formal and informal jobs in Argentina. A novel household data set on info...