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...

We test the relationship between governance and macroeconomic technical efficiency on a sample of 62 countries, both developed and developing. We do so by applying Battese and Coelli (1995)’s method at the aggregate level. We find that better governance, measured by six complementary indices...

We analyze how adding the shadow economy to official output figures affects estimated technical efficiency at the country level. We find that this only slightly affects the ranking of efficiency scores, but increases average efficiency in a sample of 87 to 97 countries, both developed and...

This paper investigates the timing of the impact of changes in checks and balances on macroeconomic efficiency in a panel of countries. Using Battese and Coelli's one-stage approach, we find that increasing checks and balances results in greater efficiency. Furthermore, the impact of...

This paper tests whether corruption may act as an efficient grease for the wheels of an oth-erwise 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....

This paper investigates the motive of geographic risk diversification in the lending activity for bank mergers in the EU on a sample of large banking groups. Geographic diversification should allow banks to reduce their risk. We observe that the loan portfolios of European banks are home-biased....

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 can be viewed as an efficient grease in the wheels of an otherwise deficient institutional framework. It does so by analyzing the interaction between aggregate efficiency, corruption, and other dimensions of governance for a panel of 54 countries both...