Previous studies have shown that reticent managers, who are identified through a series of random-response questions, answer questions about corruption, firm performance and how honest they are differently from other managers. If reticent managers’ answers are different because they are lying,...

Why have so few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa been successful in export-oriented manufacturing? This paper uses firm-level data from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys to discuss this. The paper shows that although firms in most African countries are relatively unproductive, they are more...

Recent firm-level surveys suggest that petty corruption is a serious problem for African firms, costing the average firm in many countries between 2.5 and 4.5 percent of sales. However, a minor difference in the way firms answer the question has a large effect on estimates of the size of the...