The constraint on informal finance is commonly taken to be high costs and limited supply. But the majority of informal investors - family and friends - is often willing to supply funds at negative returns, and yet many borrowers tap family and friends only as a last resort. We explain this...

We ask whether, as many seem to think, corruption worsens, and judicial accountability improves, inequality, and investigate this empirically using data from 145 countries 1960.2014. We relate perceived corruption and de facto judicial accountability to gross-income inequality and consumption...

The literature on public employment policies such as the job guarantee (JG) and the employer of last resort (ELR) often emphasizes their macroeconomic stabilization effects. But carefully designed and implemented policies like these can also have profound social transformative effects. In...

In the past few decades, commercial banks have substantially reduced the number of their branch offices. We address the question of whether or not the increased distance from the lenders correspondingly faced by many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) translates into a lower volume of...

This paper investigates the impact of financial constraints on firms' inventory holdings, an area of significant interest given that inventories are volatile over the business cycle. I use detailed data on Swedish firms' balance sheets, income statements, and credit scores. I employ a regression...

The sharing economy (peer-to-peer based sharing or renting activities coordinated through community-based online services) is typically assumed to be closely related to social trust. The two sharing economy companies Airbnb and Flipkey exist in over 100 countries, allowing us to construct a...

Existing studies of entrepreneurship focus on entrepreneurs whose individual contribution to wealth creation is typically trivial: self-employed persons. This paper investigates entrepreneurs whose individual contribution to wealth creation is enormous: billionaires. We explore the relationship...

This paper reconsiders the predominant typology pioneered by Baumol (1990) among productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship. It is shown that the foundation of Baumol’s classificatory scheme is the restrictive concept of first-best outcomes, and therefore it easily fails to...

Intrapreneurs, entrepreneurial employees, constitute an important force behind innovations in the economy. Yet, what factors that promote intrapreneurship at the country level are an underdeveloped research area. This paper provides a seminal contribution regarding the methodological approach...

Researchers increasingly recognize that entrepreneurial employees, intrapreneurs, play a critical role in innovation. As with regular entrepreneurship, however, the value of intrapreneurial activity depends on the firm-specific and societal reward structures that intrapreneurs face. Ideally,...