There is increasing concern that the difficulty of obtaining firm operation licences in developing countries may decrease firm creation and increase informality. We estimate the effect on new firm creation/registration of a program that speeds up firm registration procedures and makes them more...

We study entry and bidding patterns in sealed bid and open auctions. Using data from the U.S. Forest Service timber auctions, we document a set of systematic effects: sealed bid auctions attract more small bidders, shift the allocation toward these bidders, and can also generate higher revenue....

This paper uses nationally representative survey data from Mexico to compare households with savings accounts in formal financial institutions to their neighbors who do not have such accounts. The survey,which was conducted in 2005, contains information on nearly 5,000 households. The findings...

Credit card debt is increasingly common among poor and inexperienced borrowers – thus de facto a financial inclusion product. However, it remains relatively under-studied. We use detailed card level data and a product that accounted for 15% of all first-time formal loans in Mexico and show...

Retail petroleum markets in Mexico are on the cusp of a historic deregulation. For decades, all 11,000 gasoline stations nationwide have carried the brand of the state-owned petroleum company Pemex and sold Pemex gasoline at federally regulated retail prices. This industry structure is changing,...

Well-functioning courts are essential for the health of both financial and real economies. Courts function poorly in most lower-income countries, but the root causes of poor performance are not well understood. We use a field experiment with ongoing cases to analyze sources of dysfunction in...