Public sector motivation and development failures

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the relationship between public sector motivation and development. In the model the public sector produces a public good and workers are heterogeneous in terms of public sector motivation (PSM). Wages in the private sector increase with the quality of the public good. In this context, public sector wage premia (PSWP) have two opposite effects: low PSWP helps screen workers with PSM into the public sector, while high PSWP helps motivate workers to be honest. Raising PSWP may not improve the quality of governance and multiple equilibria might arise. The model highlights that the relative importance of workers selection and provision of ”on the job” incentives in the public sector varies in systematic ways with wages in the private sector. We provide anecdotal and original empirical evidence consistent with the theoretical predictions and discuss some policy implications for public sector reforms in developing countries.     

Tax revenues, fiscal corruption and “shame” costs

In this paper we explore tax revenues in a regime of widespread fiscal corruption in a static framework. We prove that the relationship between the tax rate and tax revenues depends on the relevance of the “shame effect” of being detected in a corrupt transaction. In countries with a “low shame” effect, tax revenues grow as the tax rate increases. Moreover, there is a critical tax rate where the growth rate of tax revenues begins to reduce. In countries with a high “shame effect” tax revenues increase up to a threshold value and then decrease.     

Asymmetry, stability and growth in a step-by-step R&D-race

We define a notion of stability of equilibrium in an infinitely repeated step-by-step R&D race. The unique symmetric equilibrium is shown to be unstable, and stable asymmetric equilibria arise, if product market competition is intense, firms are patient, imitation is difficult and innovations are large. Some predictions based on symmetric equilibria, e.g. that less patient firms always invest less in research, or that more intensive competition leads to higher economic growth, are reversed for “realistic” values of the underlying parameters.     

Economics of public good provision: auditing, outsourcing, and bribery

Abstract .  This study investigates a government's contracting decision to audit or outsource the provision of a public good given a potential hidden bribe and information asymmetries. The key findings are the following. First, the bribe and price of the public good are increasing in the corruptibility of the department. Second, the bribe is decreasing in the firm's bargaining power. Third, a bribery equilibrium exists when the department's corruptibility is sufficiently high given the firm's bargaining power. A bribe involves extortion or a compensatory payment depending on the department's corruptibility. Only a compensatory bribe affects the department's contracting decision.     

Initial endowments and economic reform in 27 post-socialist countries

This study explores how initial endowments at the start of transition have shaped reform outcomes and reform trajectories in 27 former communist countries in Europe and Central Asia. Countries of the former Russian Empire that had a large resources sector at the start of transition underperformed other countries in terms of the speed and the depth of economic reforms. The effect is particularly strong for privatization, enterprise restructuring and competition policy. Within country, Ottoman or Russian provinces that had a large natural resources sector in 1989 have a lower share of entrepreneurs and of small and medium sized enterprises today and also experience endemic corruption. Our results indicate that the propensity, or ability, of special interest groups to capture the reform process that would erode their rents were facilitated by the quality of institutions whose foundations go back centuries; and that the effects on the local economy are real.     

Mortality risks,education and child labor

In this paper, we investigate the role of young adult mortality on child labor and educational decisions. We argue that mortality risks are a major source of risks in returns to education in developing countries. We show that, in the absence of appropriate insurance mechanisms, the level of child labor is inefficient, but it can be too high or too low. It is too high when parents are not very altruistic and anticipate positive transfers from their children in the future. Uncertain returns to education, endogenous mortality or imperfect capital markets unambiguously increase child labor. When the level of child labor is inefficiently high, we also show that a cash transfer conditional on child's schooling can always restore efficiency regarding child labor.     

Information disclosure, banking development and knowledge-driven growth

In this study we develop a knowledge-driven growth model which explicitly models the banking sector as monopolistically competitive. The main mechanism through which financial intermediaries affect the real economy is through the evaluation and provision of liquidity to R&D projects. We distinguish two scenarios. In the regime with information disclosure, banks are able to use the stock of information obtained by the banking industry from evaluating R&D projects. This information externality brings about efficiency improvements, thereby leading to a positive entry of banks, more bank-funded research and in turn positive economic growth. By contrast, in the regime with no information disclosure, it is not profitable for new banks to enter the industry. This implies that no more potential R&D projects can be evaluated and hence financed, thus leading the economy to a zero-growth equilibrium.     

Phases of economic development and the transitional dynamics of an innovation-education growth model

This paper extends earlier analysis of the transitional dynamics of a growth model in which both human capital and innovation drive income expansion. Funke and Strulik [2000. On endogenous growth with physical capital, human capital and product variety. European Economic Review 44, 491-515] suggest that the typical advanced economy follows three development phases, characterized in a temporal order by physical capital accumulation, human capital formation, and innovation, and that the transitional dynamics of the model reproduce such a sequencing. I argue that other sequences of the phases of development are possible and show that the model can generate a trajectory in which innovation precedes human capital formation. This trajectory accords with the observation that the rise in formal education followed with a considerable lag the process of industrialization. U.S. income and educational time series data are used to corroborate the innovation-education trajectory.     

Fiscal decentralization and government quality in the OECD

Using indicators of fiscal decentralization which control for intergovernmental transfers and grants, it is shown that decentralization has a positive impact on government quality but that this positive effect is mitigated in the presence of regional elections and multi-level government.     

Can micro-credit bring development?

We examine the long-run effects of micro-credit on development in an occupational choice model similar to Banerjee and Newman (JPE, 1993). Micro-credit is modeled as a pure improvement in the credit market that opens up self-employment options to some agents who otherwise could only work for wages or subsist. Micro-credit can either raise or lower long-run GDP, since it can lower use of both subsistence and full-scale industrial technologies. It typically lowers long-run inequality and poverty, by making subsistence payoffs less widespread. Thus, an equity-efficiency tradeoff may be involved in the promotion of micro-credit. However, in a worst case scenario, micro-credit has purely negative long-run effects. The key to micro-credit's long-run effects is found to be the “graduation rate”, defined as the rate at which the self-employed build up enough wealth to start full-scale firms. We distinguish between two avenues for graduation: “winner” graduation (of those who earn above-average returns in self-employment) and “saver” graduation (due to gradual accumulation of average returns in self-employment). Long-run development is not attainable via micro-credit if “winner” graduation is the sole avenue for graduation. In contrast, if the saving rate and self-employment returns of the average micro-borrower are jointly high enough, then micro-credit can bring an economy from stagnation to full development through “saver” graduation. Thus the lasting effects of micro-credit may partially depend on simultaneous facilitation of micro-saving. Eventual graduation of the average borrower, rather than indefinite retention, should be the goal of micro-banks if micro-credit is to be a stepping stone to broad-based development rather than at best an anti-poverty tool.     

Sorting equilibrium in a multi-jurisdiction model

This paper analyzes a general model of an economy with heterogeneous individuals choosing among two jurisdictions, such as towns or political parties. Each jurisdiction is described by its constitution, where a constitution is defined as a mapping from all possible population partitions into the (possibly multidimensional) policy space. This study is the first to establish sufficient conditions for existence of sorting equilibria in a two-jurisdiction model for a policy space of an arbitrary dimension.     

An endogenous policy model of hierarchical government

Endogenous policy models usually neglect that government policies are frequently the result of decisions taken at different tiers by different agents, each enjoying some degree of autonomy. In this paper, policies are the outcome of the choices made by two agents within a hierarchy. A legislator decides on the budget to be successively spent by a bureaucrat. Both agents are lobbied by one or two interest groups. The combination of sequential decisionmaking and lobbying implies that the interaction between the agent at one tier and the interest group(s) depends on the exchange between the same interest group(s) and the agent at the other tier. Our results concerning multi-tier lobbying and legislatorial oversight substantially qualify the conventional wisdom related to one-tier lobbying. In particular, the reaction of the legislator to lobbying at the bureaucratic tier may make lobbying wasteful even when there is no competition from other lobbies. Moreover, the legislator benefits from lobbying only when there is competition between interest groups at the upper tier. It is also shown that competition for influence at the bureaucratic tier may work as a perfect substitute for legislatorial oversight. Extensions of the model indicate its usefulness for the analysis of decisionmaking in other multilevel governance structures, like federations or firms.     

Transfers in a polarized country: bridging the gap between efficiency and stability

We consider a political economy model of country whose citizens have heterogeneous preferences for a national policy and some regions may contemplate a threat of secession. The country is efficient if its breakup into smaller countries leads to an aggregate utility loss. We show that in an efficient country whose citizens' preferences exhibit a high degree of polarization, a threat of secession cannot be eliminated without inter-regional transfers. We also demonstrate that if majority voting is used to determine the redistribution schemes within the country, then a high degree of polarization yields the full-compensation scheme as the unique political equilibrium.     

Public goods in networks

This paper considers incentives to provide goods that are non-excludable along social or geographic links. We find, first, that networks can lead to specialization in public good provision. In every social network there is an equilibrium where some individuals contribute and others free ride. In many networks, this extreme is the only outcome. Second, specialization can benefit society as a whole. This outcome arises when contributors are linked, collectively, to many agents. Finally, a new link increases access to public goods, but reduces individual incentives to contribute. Hence, overall welfare can be higher when there are holes in a network.     

The not so dark side of trust: Does trust increase the size of the shadow economy?

This paper reports a negative relationship between the size of the shadow economy and generalized trust, in a sample of countries, both developed and developing. That relationship is robust to controlling for a large set of economic, policy, and institutional variables, to changing the estimate of the shadow economy and the estimation period, and to controlling for endogeneity. It is independent from trust in institutions and from income inequality, and is mainly present in the sample of developing countries. Those findings suggest that the tax compliance effect of trust dominates its role as a substitute for the formal legal system.     

Substitution and superstars

The existing superstar model (Rosen, 1981) does not require imperfect substitutes, and the convexity of total earnings with respect to talent is due to greater output for those with more talent. Our model explains why wages would increase at an increasing rate in talent. Imperfect substitutability between non-superstars and superstars with probabilistic production results in convexity in wage rates.     

“Almost” subsidy-free spatial pricing in a multi-dimensional setting

Consider a population of citizens uniformly spread over the entire plane. The population faces a problem of locating public facilities financed by its users, who face an idiosyncratic private access cost to the facility. We show that, under mild assumptions, an external intervention that covers a tiny portion of the facility cost is sufficient to guarantee secession-proofness or no cross-subsidization, where no group of individuals is charged more than the cost incurred if it had acted on its own. Moreover, we demonstrate that in this case the Rawlsian access pricing is the only mechanism that rules out secession threats.     

R&D INCENTIVES UNDER BERTRAND COMPETITION: A DIFFERENTIAL GAME*

We investigate dynamic R&D for process innovation in an oligopoly where firms invest in cost‐reducing activities. We focus on the correlation between R&D intensity and market structure, proving that the industry R&D investment at equilibrium monotonically increases in the number of firms. This result contradicts the established wisdom acquired from static games on the same topic. We also prove that, if competition is sufficiently tough, any increase in product substitutability reduces R&D efforts.