This paper develops a model of costly firm creation in an economy with weak institutions, costly business environment as well as skill gaps where one of the equilibrium outcomes is a low-productivity trap. The paper tests the implications of the model using a cross-sectional dataset including...

Several empirical studies in finance have examined whether or not the risk associated with any stock market responds differently in two different states of the stock market, especially in bull and bear markets. This paper studies this problem in the modelling framework, where (i) the conditional...