This paper studies drivers of high-frequency (daily) dynamics of the South African rand vis-à-vis the dollar from January 2001 to July 2007. We find strong nonlinear effects of commodity prices, perceived country and emerging market risk premium and changes in the dollar-euro exchange rate on...

This paper finds that coherent regulatory policies can boost investment in network industries of OECD economies. Rate-of-return regulation is generally thought to result in overinvestment, while incentive regulation is believed to entail underinvestment. Yet, previous empirical work has...

Using cross-country and Peruvian data, I show that victims of misfortune, particularly crime victims, are much more likely than non-victims to bribe public officials. Misfortune increases victims' demand for public services, raising bribery indirectly, and also increases victims' propensity to...

What is the interrelationship among formal institutions, social networks, and new venture growth? Drawing on the theory of institutional polycentrism and social network theory, we examine this question using data on 637 entrepreneurs from four different countries. We find the confluence of weak...

Microfinance institutions are important, particularly in developing countries, because they expand the frontier of financial intermediation by providing loans to those traditionally excluded from formal financial markets. This paper presents the first systematic statistical examination of the...

We study the dispersion in rates of provincial economic- and TFP growth in China. Our results show that regional growth patterns can be understood as a function of several interrelated factors, which include investment in physical capital, human capital, and infrastructure capital; the infusion...

Financial depth does not fully reflect how well the financial intermediaries serve to economic agents in stimulating economic growth. Additional aspects of financial system such as access, efficiency and stability should be taken into account in order to shed light into the relationship between...

This article examines the impact of the banking sector development on households' saving dynamics in the emerging economies of Eastern Europe. For this purpose, we use the mean group FMOLS estimator to estimate the saving function augmented with variables characterizing three dimensions of the...

This paper tackles the monetary policy performance in Brazil, Chile and South Africa under inflation targeting framework. Furthermore, it provides an empirical assessment through using the unrestricted Vector Auto-regression (VAR) and Structural Vector Auto-regression (SVAR) approaches depending...

There is a widespread opinion that goods, especially foods, and services in Russia are very cheap as compared to the US. A number of Russian statistical indicators characterizing the cost of living, either directly or indirectly, seemingly corroborate this opinion. This paper demonstrates that...