The large literature on the relationship between finance and growth uses the Private Credit/GDP ratio as the proxy for financial development. However, little research has gone into the evaluation of policies to impact Private Credit. Finance theory points to information sharing and creditor...

This paper studies the effect of political liberalisation on financial development in two steps. First, the paper examines whether political liberalisation in terms of institutional improvement promotes financial development, using a panel dataset of 90 developed and developing countries over...

We measure the effect of governance on sovereign creditworthiness, as measured by sovereign credit ratings. Governance may affect the government's ability to raise tax revenue to service its debt, with poor enough governance leading to insolvency. Data for 1996-2005 indicate that countries with...

Conventional economic analysis assumes that Central Counterparties (CCPs) may help to reduce systemic risk and avoid future financial crises by mandating the central clearing of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. This view largely goes unchallenged by governments, regulators, practitioners, and...

Civil society plays a crucial role in governance where laws and authority are weak. Increasingly, multinationals operate in these complex environments. We study how a key strategy of international civil society--disseminating information about human rights abuse--impacts multinationals. To do...

In this paper I simplify the modeling of transitional dynamics and empirically explain why so many developing economies have seen their per capita income diverge from that of most OECD economies. I also provide evidence that strongly supports conditional convergence among the sample considered...

This paper compares the impact of institutions on individual decisions to become entrepreneurs in the form of new business start ups by males and females across 44 developed and developing economies between 1998 and 2004. We test four hypotheses; that women are less likely to undertake...

The aim of this paper is to quantify the role of formal-sector institutions in shaping the demand for human capital and the level of informality. We propose a firm dynamics model where firms face capital market imperfections and costs of operating in the formal sector. Formal firms have a larger...

This paper compares the impact of institutions on individual decisions to become entrepreneurs in the form of new business start ups by males and females across 44 developed and developing economies between 1998 and 2004. We test four hypotheses; that women are less likely to undertake...