Recent years have seen a remarkable expansion in economists' ability to measure
corruption. This in turn has led to a new generation of well-identified, microeconomic …

This article reviews both the theoretical and empirical literatures on regulatory capture. The
scope is broad, but utility regulation is emphasized. I begin by describing the Stigler …

This study empirically investigates the effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and
country governance on bank liquidity creation in various countries. Using the cross-country …

There are fewer people living in extreme poverty in the world today than 30 years ago. While
that is an achievement, continuing progress for poor people is far from assured. Inequalities …

Low-income countries typically collect taxes of between 10 to 20 percent of GDP while the
average for high-income countries is more like 40 percent. In order to understand taxation …

Antipoverty programs in developing countries are often difficult to implement; in particular,
many governments lack the capacity to deliver payments securely to targeted beneficiaries …

Poverty relief programs are shaped by politics. The particular design which social programs
take is to a large extent determined by the existing institutional constraints and politicians' …

Claims that the VAT facilitates tax enforcement by generating paper trails on transactions
between firms contributed to widespread VAT adoption worldwide, but there is surprisingly …

This paper presents two propositions about corruption. First, the structure of government
institutions and of the political process are very important determinants of the level of …

Retrospective voting models assume that offering more information to voters about their
incumbents' performance strengthens electoral accountability. However, it is unclear …