Within the fundamental determinants of cross-country income inequality, ‘humanly devised' political institutions represent a hallmark factor that societies can influence, as opposed to, for example, geography. Focusing on the portion of inequality explainable by differences in political...

Cross-country regressions suggest that urbanization and FDI are important drivers of growth. However, it is not clear that primacy eventually hurts growth performance. Since it is tough to interpret cross-country growth regressions, we provide detailed evidence on the determinants of outward FDI...

This paper analyzes the impact of internet adoption on labor productivity in Peruvian micro and small manufacturing firms over the period 2011-2013. Instrumental variables estimates show that internet adoption: (i) increases firms' labor productivity; (ii) reallocates employment away from...

We introduce transport cost of trade in products into the classical Zodrow and Mieszkowski (1986) model of capital tax competition. It turns out that even small levels of transport cost lead to a complete breakdown of the seminal result, the underprovision of public goods. Instead, there is a...

We revisit the relationship between financial development and economic growth in a panel of 52 middle income countries over the 1980-2008 period, using pooled mean group estimator in a dynamic heterogeneous panel setting. We show that financial development does not have a linear positive...

This paper models a multilateral agreement on investment (MAI) as a coordination device. Multinational enterprises can invest in any number of countries. Without a multilateral investment agreement, expropriation triggers an investment stop by the single MNE. Under a multilateral agreement,...

This paper surveys tax haven legislation and links the literature on tax havens to the literature on asymmetric information. I argue that the core aim of tax haven legislation is to create private information (secrecy) for the users of tax havens. This leads to moral hazard and transaction costs...

This paper analyzes tax competition between countries which differ in their country-specific risk. We show that the outcome of asymmetric tax competition crucially depends on the ability of multinational firms to shift profits. With high costs of profit shifting, higher-risk countries set lower...

The debate on trade and growth increasingly focuses on the composition of exports. Exports of more “sophisticated” products appear to be positively correlated with growth, and upgrading the quality of exports is high on the policy agenda of many countries. This study presents evidence...

After a decade of research on the relationship between institutions and growth, scholars in this field seem to be divided. Economic institutions perform well in growth regressions and a body of literature argues that this supports the key importance of institutions for development. Other authors...