Decentralizing the allocation of public goods by giving funds directly to communities takes advantage of local information concerning needs, but leaves funds open to misuse or capture by local elites. A large scale development project in Indonesia attempts to overcome this downside of...

Using a survey of new firms in Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, I explore how an entrepreneur’s social networks affect the amount paid in bribes to government officials. Lower levels of bribe payments are associated with ownership by a former manager of a state-owned enterprise (SOE), with being...