In this paper, Bayesian methods and the Finnish aggregate infrastructure capital series from 1860 to 2003 are used to explore how government infrastructure policy affects long-run output growth. We use Finnish data, since to the best of our knowledge the Finnish land and water construction...

Profitability improvements after the privatization of a large state-owned bank might come at the expense of reduced access to financial services for some groups, especially the rural poor. The privatization of Tanzania's National Bank of Commerce provides a unique episode for studying this...

In recent years, governments have been increasingly adopting Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contracts for large infrastructure projects. However, BOT contracts have received little attention from economists. The apparent agency problem in BOT projects has never been analyzed. In this paper, we...

Migration flows are shaped by a complex combination of self-selection and out-selection mechanisms, both of which are affected by the presence of a diaspora abroad. In this paper, we analyze how existing diasporas (the stock of people born in a country and living in another one) affect the size...

This paper investigates the role played by domestic importers and foreign exporters in improving preferential access to the domestic market. To this end, the framework used in this paper extends the protection for sale analysis to explicitly model the role of domestic importers and foreign...

Indonesia has a tradition of corruption among local officials who harass and collect bribes from firms. This paper examines whether corruption is affected by local democratization and by the party composition of local assemblies. Democratization occurred in 1999 and decentralization in 2001. We...

Establishing a strong scientific community is important as countries develop and requires both producing and retaining of important scientists. We show that developing countries produce a sizeable number of important scientists, but that they experience a tremendous brain drain. Education...

This paper analyzes the interaction of international migration of high-skilled labor and relative wage income between source and destination economies of expatriates. We develop an overlapping-generations model with increasing returns which suggests that international integration of the market...

Economic globalization will give many women in developing countries access to steady and relatively remunerative employment for the first time, potentially shifting bargaining power within their households and changing the choices that are made for their children. This paper exploits a unique...