Well-functioning institutions matter for economic development. In order to operate effectively, public institutions must also inspire confidence in those they serve. The authors use data from the Gallup World Poll, a unique and very large global household survey, to document a quantitatively...

Well-functioning institutions matter for economic development. In order to operate effectively, public institutions must also inspire confidence in those they serve. We use data from the Gallup World Poll, a unique and very large global household survey, to document a quantitatively large and...

A companion volume to the International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption published in 2006, the specially commissioned papers in Volume Two present some of the best policy-oriented research in the field. They stress the institutional roots of corruption and include new research on topics...

A potential concern with survey-based data on corruption is that respondents may not be fully candid in their responses to sensitive questions. If reticent respondents are less likely to admit to involvement in corrupt acts, and if the proportion of reticent respondents varies across groups of...

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the relationship between real effective exchange rate uncertainty and aggregate investment in six Latin American economies. Its main contributions are that it explicitly tests for linear as well as non-linear effects of uncertainty in a time-series...

Estimates of the extent of corruption rely largely on self-reports of individuals, business managers, and government officials. Yet it is well known that survey respondents are reticent to tell the truth about activities to which social and legal stigma are attached, implying a downward bias in...

How do countries hold their financial wealth? We construct a new database of countries' claims on capital located at home and abroad, and international borrowing and lending, covering 68 countries from 1966-97. We find that a small amount of capital flows from rich countries to poor countries....

A key issue today is the effect of globalisation on inequality and poverty. Well over half the developing world lives in globalising economies that have seen large increases in trade and significant declines in tariffs. They are catching up the rich countries while the rest of the developing...