This paper analyzes the cyclical properties of worker flows in Brazil and Mexico, two important developing countries with large unregulated or "informal" sectors. It generates three stylized facts that are critical to the accurate modeling of the sector and which suggest the need to rethink the...

The paper investigates the impact of ownership concentration on GDP growth, for a sample of 18 OECD countries over the period 1980 to 2004. The econometric analysis shows that more concentrated ownership can speed up growth, for countries approaching the technological frontier, provided that...

Existing research examining the self-selection of immigrants suffers from a lack ofinformation on the immigrants´ labor force activities in the home country, quotas limiting whois allowed to enter the destination country, and non-economic factors such as internal civilstrife in the home...

This paper proposes that the lack of a theoretical framework able to address policyissues on the firm as well as the industry level in an integrated manner contributes toa failure of developing effective e-commerce policies. Specifically, theoreticalapproaches fall into the two broad categories...

Entrepreneurship literature (Parker 2004) has rarely considered spatial locationas a micro-determinant of occupational choice, although there are compellingreasons to posit that spatial location influences economic behavior. Using Bayesiansemiparametric methodologies and geoadditive techniques,...

Empirical work on micro and small firms has focused on developed countries.The little work that exists on developing countries is all too often based on smallsamples taken from ad hoc questionnaires. The census data we analyze are fairlyrepresentative of the structure of small business in India....

We investigate the impact of changes in international trade and domestic transport costs on the internalgeography of a domestic economy linked to the rest of the World through a hub. We address that issue bydeveloping two three regions model, namely a version of the Footlose Entrepreneur and a...

The extinction of genetic resources as a consequence of land development, especially in ‘biodiversity hot spots’like rain forests in South America or South East Asia, is becoming a serious problem - not only for local communitiesbut also for international firms in the pharmaceutical...

The paper explores the determinants of up-front fees on sovereign bank loans.Remuneration of bank loans is typically channelled through the floating interestbenchmark, the interest spread, and a battery of fees. There is substantial evidence of thespread paying for long-run sovereign repayment...

The self-employed are substantially more satisfied with their work than employed persons. We document this relationship for 23 countries and show that the higher job satisfaction can directly be attributed to the greater autonomy that self-employed persons enjoy....