This paper investigates which firms suffer from informal competition and highlights the role of access to finance in this context. We use cross-sectional data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys covering 42,000 firms in 114 developing and transition countries for the period 2006 to 2011 and...

This paper investigates which firms suffer from informal competition and highlights the role of access to finance in this context.We use cross-sectional data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys covering 42,000 firms in 114 developing and transition countries for the period 2006 to 2011 and...

The potential benefits of the geographical clustering of economic activity have been well documented in the literature, yet there is little empirical evidence quantifying these effects in developing country contexts. This is surprising given the emphasis in industrial policy on productivity...

Der Wettbewerb unter Kreditauskunfteien in Deutschland hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren stark intensiviert. Auskunfteien sammeln persönliche Daten über Verbraucher, die von Kreditinstituten, Leasing- und Telekommunikationsunternehmen, aber auch von Handelsfirmen sowie Energieversorgern...

The number of firm bankruptcies is surprisingly low in economies with poor institutions. We study a model of bank-firm relationship and show that the bank's decision to liquidate bad firms has two opposing effects. First, the bank gets a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the rent...