Is investment constrained more by insecure property rights or by limited external finance? For five transition economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union we find that weak property rights limit the reinvestment of profits in startup ma nufacturing firms. Access to credit does not...

The mix of formal and informal mechanisms for contract enforcement is examined using survey data from Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Poland, and Slovakia. Using the size of trade credit to quantify the success of contracting, we ask: Do the courts have a perceptible effect on contracting? When can a...

Which of the democratic checks and balances - opposition parties, the judiciary, a free press -is the most critical? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Vladimiro Montesinos systematically undermined them all with bribes. We quantify the checks...

Which of the democratic checks and balances - opposition parties, the judiciary, a free press -is the most critical? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Vladimiro Montesinos systematically undermined them all with bribes. We quantify the checks...

This paper (a) provides a framework for quantifying any economy's flexibility, and (b) reviews the evidence on New Zealand firms' birth, growth and death. The data indicate that, by and large, the labour market and the financial market are doing their job.

How has China achieved its spectacular economic growth under reform, despite having no commercial law, no financial market, prices that are only partially freed, and no privatization? I argue that the fundamental reasons for China’s success are not unique to China. China succeeded because...

The FCC was an innovator in adopting the rules of the simultaneous ascending-price auction for its sales of spectrum licenses. While these rules have performed well in the auctions conducted so far (and would perform even better with the design improvements suggested in our first report), there...

We examine bid data from the first two broadband PCS spectrum auctions for evidence of value synergies. First, we estimate a benchmark regression for the determinants of final auction prices. Then, we include variables reflecting the extent to which bidders ultimately won or already owned the...