The authors determine how time delays affect international trade using newly collected World Bank data on the days it takes to move standard cargo from the factory gate to the ship in 126 countries. They estimate a modified gravity equation, controlling for endogeneity and remoteness. On...

Resolving systemic banking and corporate distress is not easy. The large scale of the East Asian financial crisis has made the task even more daunting in Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. Two years into the process, bank and corporate restructuring is still a work in...

This Note reports an analysis of ultimate control in nearly 3,000 publicly traded companies in December 1996-before the financial crisis-in nine East Asian economies: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan (China), and Thailand. The...

A study of the five countries most affected by the East Asian financial crisis - Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand -- shows that more than 60 percent of firms are illiquid and 30 percent are technically insolvent. Among solvent firms, about half are at...

The authors argue that mass privatization in the Czech Republic has spurred enterprise restructuring and that investment funds have played a key part in this outcome. Using 1992-95 data for more than 700 Czech firms, the authors find strong positive relationships between ownership concentration...

Simplifying entry regulation has been a popular reform since the publication of Djankov and others (2002). The inclusion of business entry indicators in the World Bank's Doing Business project has led to an acceleration in reform: in 2003–08, 193 reforms took place in 116 countries. A large...

The institutions of bankruptcy have been at the center of the great economic events of the last decade, ranging from the Asian economic crisis, to the transition from socialism to capitalism. Our understanding of the economic, and legal structure of these institutions, as well as of their impact...

The dominant hypothesis in the literature that studies conflict is that poverty is the main cause of civil wars. The authors instead analyze the effect of institutions on civil war, controlling for income per capita. In their set up, institutions are endogenous and colonial origins affect civil...

The authors use a sample of 147 countries to investigate the link between democracy and reforms. Democracy may be conducive to reforms, because politicians have the incentive to embrace growth-enhancing reforms to win elections. By contrast, authoritarian regimes do not have to worry as much...

The authors use a sample of 133 countries to investigate the link between the abundance of natural resources and micro-economic reforms. Previous studies suggest that natural resource abundance gives rise to governments that are less accountable to the public and states that are oligarchic, and...