We study conditions under which legal sanctions may lead to an efficient selection of heterogeneous investment projects. We consider a standard debt contract between a bank and a small firm (either profitable or not) : if financial distress occurs, an arbitration between private agreement and...

We study conditions under which legal sanctions may lead to an efficient selection of heterogeneous investment projects. The bankruptcy code is a "primitive creditor system" and financial distress leads to an arbitration between private agreement and costly formal bankruptcy. We consider a...

We analyze how adding the shadow economy to official output figures affects technical efficiency. We find that this only slightly affects the ranking of efficiency scores, but increases average efficiency. Our results are robust to the functional form of the production technology and the...

This paper tests whether corruption may act as an efficient grease for the wheels of an otherwise deficient institutional framework. We analyze the interaction between aggregate efficiency, corruption, and other dimensions of governance for a panel of 54 developed and developing countries. Using...

This paper addresses the relationship between bank competition and efficiency by computing Lerner indices and cost efficiency scores for a sample of Chinese banks over the period 2002-2011. Granger-causality tests are performed in a dynamic GMM panel estimator framework to evaluate the sign and...

This paper contributes to the debate on the effect of capital requirements on bank effieciency. We study the relation between capital ratio and bank efficiency for Chinese banks over the period 2004?2009, taking advantage of the profound regulatory changes in capital requirements that occurred...

This paper contributes to the debate on the effect of capital requirements on bank efficiency. We study the relation between capital ratio and bank efficiency for Chinese banks over the period 2004-2009, taking advantage of the profound regulatory changes in capital requirements that occurred...

This paper addresses the relationship between bank competition and efficiency by computing Lerner indices and cost efficiency scores for a sample of Chinese banks over the period 2002-2011. Granger-causality tests are performed in a dynamic GMM panel estimator framework to evaluate the sign and...

This study evaluates whether the development of Islamic banking influences macroeconomic efficiency. Thus, we contribute to the analysis of the relation between Islamic finance and economic growth by applying the stochastic frontier approach to estimate technical efficiency at the country level...