This paper develops a model to assess the quantitative effect of entry cost and financial friction on cross-country income and total factor productivity (TFP) differences. The main focus is on the interaction between entry cost and financial friction. The model is calibrated to match...

There are large differences in income per capita across countries. Growth accounting finds that a large part of the differences comes from the differences in total factor productivity (TFP). This paper explores whether barrier to entry is an important factor for the cross-country differences in...

We develop a general equilibrium model to assess the quantitative impact of distorting institutions and policies related to the poor business environment in 30 sub-Saharan African countries. A subset of the distortions - namely, regulation, crime, corruption, and poor infrastructure - is modeled...

We document that the employment share of high-skill-intensive services is much lower in China than in countries with similar gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. We build a model of structural change with goods and low- and high-skill-intensive services to account for this observation. We...