In this paper entrepreneurs are defined as agents who bring about economic change by combining their own effort with other factors of production in search of economic rents. The institutional setup is argued to determine both the supply and direction of entrepreneurial activity. Four key institutions are explored more closely: property rights protection, savings policies, taxation and the regul...

This paper documents a positive relation between internationalization and bank risk. This is consistent with the empirical dominance of the market risk hypothesis – whereby internationalization increases banks’ risk due to market-specific factors – over the diversification hypothesis – whereby internationalization allows banks to reduce risk through increased diversification of their operations...

Using data from a randomized control trial in Sri Lanka, this paper explores whether cash and in-kind grants helped microenterprises approach the productivity level of SMEs. The paper first estimates production functions and subsequently treatment effects on TFP levels. Most significantly, more able and more risk-averse owners benefit from the larger in-kind grant. Also, the larger in-kind gran...

The United States paper and paperboard industry has experienced significant structural changes over the past twenty-five years, including reductions in the number of mills, lower rates of capacity growth, employment cutbacks, and a loss of market share to foreign competitors. These structural shifts portray an industry that increasingly has difficulty adapting to a more competitive global envir...

In this paper I develop a theoretical model and analyze the relationship between two bilateral monopolies, investments decisions of downstream …rms regarding technologies speci…c to suppliers, and suppliers’ incentives to merge. The paper discusses the concept of the choice of dedicated versus ‡exible production technology in the context of bilateral monopolies. I aim to answer two questions. F...

We evaluate how the productive structure and level of specialization of a hospital affect technical efficiency by analyzing a six-year panel database (2000/2005) drawn from hospital discharge records and Ministry of Health data. We adopt a distance function approach, while measuring the technical efficiency level with stochastic frontier techniques. After controlling for environmental variables...