Recent Articles
Gender and Firm-size: Evidence from Africa, Mimeograph (2010)
A number of studies show that relative to male owned businesses, female owned businesses are...
Home-based Informal Businesses and the Gender Dimension, Mimeograph (2010)
Anecdotal evidence suggests that working from home makes it easier to balance work and family...
Labor Productivity in the Informal Sector: Necessity vs. Opportunity Firms, Mimeograph (2009)
Differences between opportunity and necessity firms within the informal sector have long been debated. This...
Obstacles to Registering: Necessity vs. Opportunity Entrepreneurs, Mimeograph (2009)
Using a new dataset on informal or unregistered firms in three African countries, this paper...
Who Suffers More from Crime?, Mimeograph (2009)
Existing studies aimed at identifying individuals or economic agents that suffer more from crime than...
Short Notes
Necessity vs. Opportunity Entrepreneurs in the Informal sector (Short Note), Mimeograph (2009)
Some informal businesses are started to take advantage of business opportunities (opportunity firms) while others...
How different are service and manufacturing firms in the informal sector? (Short Note), Mimeograph (2009)
A comparison of service and manufacturing firms in the informal sector shows that service firms...
Determinants of Doing Business Reforms (with Simeon Djankov) (2009)
This note identifies quality of democracy and amount of natural resources as important determinants of...
Crime and Security in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Firm Level Analysis (A Short Note), Mimeograph (2009)
About 20 percent of the firms in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region are...
Crime, Security and Firms in Latin America (Short Note), Mimeograph (2009)
Existing studies on crime are exclusively focused on crime against individuals and households. These studies...
Popular Press
Migration from Zambia: Ensuring Temporariness through Cooperation (with Aaditya Mattoo), Working Paper Series, World Bank (2009)
The paper analyzes migration from Zambia in order to understand how migration policy can support...
Retailing in India: Assessing the Investment Climate, India Economy Review (2008)
An overview of the business climate for the retail sector in India is provided using...
Other Papers
The Cost of Registering Property: Does Legal Origin Matter? (with Jamal I. Haidar), Mimeograph (2008)
There is a large literature that finds that common law countries perform better than civil...
What Firms Know (2008)
A large literature shows that common law countries perform better than civil law countries along...
Labor Regulation and Employment in India’s Retail Stores, forthcoming, Journal of Comparative Economics (2008)
A new dataset of 1,948 retail stores in India shows that 27% of the stores...