Extortion is a severe obstacle to doing business in many countries, varies both in its frequency and magnitude across establishments. This paper presents a model of extortion to account for these features and assess its quantitative effects. In the model, entrepreneur capital is subject to...

Establishment exposure to crime is a frequent occurrence and a major obstacle to business operation in developing economies. We present a simple theory for the frequency and severity of crime across establishment size that is validated against the data in South America. We find that high...

How do institutions affect resource misallocation? This paper focuses on a particular class of institutions, namely property rights, and their relation to extortion. Motivated by empirical evidence that there are differences in extortion rates across establishments, both within and across...

Plant-level innovation is introduced into an heterogeneous plant setting so that productivity dynamics are endogenous. When policy distortions are positively correlated with plant productivity, I argue that accounting for plant innovation is important for understanding TFP differences across...

Using cross-country micro establishment-level data we document that crime and lack of access to finance are two major obstacles to business operation in poor and developing countries. Using an otherwise standard model of production heterogeneity that integrates institutional differences in the...