Applicability of Wagner's hypothesis to six East Asian countries is studied for a period of nearly a half-century during which their economic growth has often been termed as a "miracle". Despite the high rates of growth in most cases, there is little indication to support the hypothesis except...

This study uses a large firm-level data set covering more than 80 countries to explore the effects of firm-size, city-size, and government-size on perceived and experienced corruption. Four points summarize our main findings, which seem instructive and new. First, there is a broad structural...

Adding to the literature on the effects of government decentralization, this paper uses a large sample of individual responses from more than a hundred countries about public’s perceptions of government’s performance along various dimensions to study the relative influences of different...

Following the extensive literature on income (growth) elasticities of poverty in developing countries, this paper explores the magnitude of improvement in a country's human development as its per capita income increases. The response is measured in terms of the income elasticity of Human...

Provides estimates of individual income tax elasticity in the U.S. by augmenting the nice cross-section model suggested by Tanzi (1969, 1976) through the addition of income-inequality and quadratic income terms. Results for the 1980's, based on income inequality data for 1979, show the same...

THE COMMENT BY EDWARDS AND MCGUIRK (2004) HAS numerous significant flaws. These include: (1) an incomplete understanding of the paper by Chang and Ram (2000), (2) lack of familiarity with development data sets and the vast literature on cross-country studies of inequality and growth, and (3) an...

A rejoinder to Edwards and McGuirk (August 2004). Link.

This study uses a large firm-level data set covering more than 80 countries to explore the effects of firm-size, city-size, and government-size on perceived and experienced corruption. Four points summarize our main findings, which seem instructive and new. First, there is a broad structural...