Automobile depreciation rates and dealer markups in the United States and Britain during the 1950s and 1960s provide evidence on the effect of asymmetric information on market structures. Initial depreciation was not exceptional, and trade was not disabled. `Lemon` effects were evident in some...

What are the conditions conducive to long-term transplantation of mafia groups in new territories? This paper systematically reviews a number of factors that facilitate such an outcome, including: migration from territories with high mafia density; the policy of forcing criminals to resettle...

The analysis of reputation as a contract enforcement instrument where legal institutions, especially commercial courts, fail to enforce commercial contracts has focused on informal credit markets. The literature centres on the argument that lenders or co-borrowers in group lending can easily...

In a wide variety of international macro models monetary policy cooperation is optimal, non-cooperative policies are inefficient, but optimal policies can be attained noncooperatively by optimal design of domestic institutions. We show that given endogenous institutional design, inefficiencies...

Stochastic volatility (SV) is the main concept used in the fields of financial economics and mathematical finance to deal with the endemic time-varying volatility and codependence found in financial markets. Such dependence has been known for a long time, early comments include Mandelbrot (1963)...

NGOs have been lauded both for being political entrepreneurs - facilitators of transformative politics - and also development agents - implementers of participatory development. However, not many believe that NGOs can successfully combine both these roles. This view arises from a larger cynicism...

This article investigates how financial development is beneficial to the reduction of poverty, on the one hand by promoting growth and on the other hand directly by the McKinnon conduit effect. At the same time, however, financial instability which accompanies financial development is...

This paper takes as its point of departure recent research that suggests pro-poor policies are more likely to be supported by central elites than local elites, and that, in contexts where there is significant decentralization of government, central government may need to challenge local elite...