Financial Development and the Composition of Industrial Growth

We re-examine the role of financial market development in the intersectoral allocation of resources. Specifically, we propose the use of a new methodology that looks at the co-movement in growth rates across pairs of countries to examine the role of financial development in allowing firms to take advantage of growth opportunities. Our model begins with the assumption that there exist common global shocks to growth opportunities, and we hypothesize that countries should therefore have correlated patterns of growth if they are able to take advantage of these shocks. We find that countries have more highly correlated growth rates across sectors when both countries have well-developed financial markets; this is consistent with financial markets playing an important role in allowing firms to take advantage of global growth opportunities. We further observe that growth opportunities will be more similar for countries that are at similar levels of economic development. This allows for a further refinement of our initial test: the impact of financial development on country-pair co-movement is much stronger between country pairs at similar levels of economic development. Finally, we note that our results imply that private banking appears to play a particularly important role in resource allocation, as our results are particularly strong when financial development takes into account both the level and composition of financial market institutions.

Cultures of Corruption: Evidence From Diplomatic Parking Tickets

Corruption is believed to be a major factor impeding economic development, but the importance of legal enforcement versus cultural norms in controlling corruption is poorly understood. To disentangle these two factors, we exploit a natural experiment, the stationing of thousands of diplomats from around the world in New York City. Diplomatic immunity means there was essentially zero legal enforcement of diplomatic parking violations, allowing us to examine the role of cultural norms alone. This generates a revealed preference measure of government officials' corruption based on real-world behavior taking place in the same setting. We find strong persistence in corruption norms: diplomats from high corruption countries (based on existing survey-based indices) have significantly more parking violations, and these differences persist over time. In a second main result, officials from countries that survey evidence indicates have less favorable popular views of the United States commit significantly more parking violations, providing non-laboratory evidence on sentiment in economic decision-making. Taken together, factors other than legal enforcement appear to be important determinants of corruption.

Patterns of industrial development revisted : the role of finance

The authors reexamine the role of financial market development in the intersectoral allocation of resources. First, they characterize the assumptions underlying previous work in this area, in particular, that of Rajan and Zingales (1998). The authors argue that Rajan and Zingales (1998) implicitly test whether financial intermediaries allow firms to better respond to global shocks to growth opportunities. Second, the authors propose a more efficient alternative test of this hypothesis using statistical techniques developed in the social networks literature. Specifically, they find that countries have more highly correlated growth rates across sectors when they have well-developed financial markets, suggesting that financial markets play an important role in allowing firms to take advantage of global growth opportunities. These results are particularly strong when financial development takes into account both the level and composition of financial development: private banking appears to play a particularly important role in resource allocation. The authors'technique allows them to further distinguish between the"growth opportunities"hypothesis stated above and the alternative"finance and external dependence"hypothesis, which implies that countries with similar levels of financial development should specialize in similar sectors. They do not find evidence to support this alternative view of finance and development.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Economic Conditions and Volatility,Achieving Shared Growth,Governance Indicators,Economic Growth,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Economic Conditions and Volatility

Does Competition Encourage Credit Provision? Evidence from African Trade Credit Relationships

Previous work has claimed that monopoly power facilitates the provision of credit, since monopolists are better able to enforce payment. Here, we argue that if relationship-specific investments are required by borrowers to establish creditworthiness, monopoly power may reduce credit provision because hold up problems ex post will deter borrowers from investing in establishing creditworthiness. Empirically, we examine the relationship between monopoly power and credit provision, using data on the supply relationships of firms in five African countries. Consistent with the upfront investment story, we find that monopoly power is negatively associated with credit provision, and that this correlation is stronger in older supplier relationships. Because the data include several observations per firm, we are able to utilize firm fixed-effects, thus netting out unobserved firm characteristics that may have been driving results in earlier studies.

Trade Credit, Financial Intermediary Development and Industry Growth

Recent work suggests that financial development is important for economic growth, since financial markets more effectively allocate capital to firms with high value projects. For firms in poorly developed financial markets, implicit borrowing in the form of trade credit may provide an alternative source of funds. We show that industries with higher dependence on trade credit financing exhibit higher rates of growth in countries with weaker financial institutions. Furthermore, consistent with barriers to trade credit access among young firms, we show that most of the effect that we report comes from growth in the size of pre-existing firms.

Financial development and growth in the short and long run

The authors analyze the relationship between financial development and inter-industry resource allocation in the short and long run. They suggest that in the long run, economies with high rates of financial development will devote relatively more resources to industries with a"natural"reliance on outside finance due to a comparative advantage in these industries. By contrast, in the short run the authors argue that financial development facilitates the reallocation of resources to industries with good growth opportunities, regardless of their reliance on outside finance. To test these predictions, they use a measure of industry-level"technological"financial dependence based on the earlier work of Rajan and Zingales (1998) and develop new proxies for shocks to (short-run) industry growth opportunities. The authors find differential effects of these measures on industry growth and composition in countries with different levels of financial development. They obtain results that are consistent with financially developed economies specializing in"financially dependent"industries in the long run, and allocating resources to industries with high growth opportunities in the short run.Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Banks&Banking Reform,Water and Industry,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Achieving Shared Growth,Water and Industry,Governance Indicators,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Banks&Banking Reform

Decentralization and corruption - evidence across countries

The relationship between decentralization of government activities and the extent of rent extraction by private parties is an important element in the recent debate on institutional design. The theoretical literature makes ambiguous predictions about this relationship, and it has remained virtually unexamined by empiricists. The authors make a first attempt at examining the issue empirically, by looking at the cross-country relationship between fiscal decentralization and corruption as measured by a number of different indices. Their estimates suggest that fiscal decentralization in government spending is significantly associated with lower corruption. Moreover, they find that the origin of a country's legal system - for example, civil versus common legal code - performs extremely well as an instrument for decentralization. The estimated relationship between decentralization, when so instrumented, and corruption is even stronger. The evidence suggests a number of interesting areas for future work, including investigating whether there are specific services for which decentralized provision has a particularly strong impact on political rent extraction, and understanding the channels through which decentralization succeeds in keeping corruption in check.National Governance,Decentralization,Pharmaceuticals&Pharmacoeconomics,Economic Theory&Research,Legal Products,National Governance,Governance Indicators,Pharmaceuticals&Pharmacoeconomics,Economic Theory&Research,Legal Products

Are corruption and taxation really harmful to growth? - firm-level evidence

Exploiting a unique data set containing information about the estimated bribe payments of Ugandan firms, the authors study the relationship between bribe payments, taxes, and firm growth in Uganda for the period 1995-97. Using industry-location averages to circumvent the potential problem of endogeneity, and to deal with issues of measurement error, they find that both the rate of taxation, and the rate of bribery are negatively correlated with firm growth. For the full data set, a one percentage point increase in the bribery rate is associated with three percentage point reduction in firm growth - an effect about three times that of taxation. Moreover, after excluding outliers, the authors find that bribery has a much greater negative impact on growth, and taxation a considerably smaller one. This provides some validation of firm-level theories of corruption, which posit that corruption retards development, even more than taxation does.Governance Indicators,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Corruption&Anitcorruption Law,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Achieving Shared Growth

Trade credit, financial intermediary development, and industry growth

Recent empirical work has shown that financial development is important for economic growth, since well-developed financial markets are more effective at allocating capital to firms with high-value projects. This raises the question of whether firms with high return projects in countries with poorly developed financial institutions, are able to draw on alternative sources of capital, to offset the effects of deficient (formal) financial intermediaries. Recent work suggests that implicit borrowing, in the form of trade credit, may provide one such source of funds. Using the methodology of Rajan and Zingales (1998), the authors show that in countries with relatively weak financial institutions, industries with greater dependence on trade credit financing (measured by the ratio of accounts payable to total assets) grow faster than industries that rely less on such credit. Furthermore, consistent with the notion that young firms may not use trade credit, the authors show that most of the effect they report, comes from growth in preexisting firms, rather than from an increase in the number of firms.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Housing Finance

Are Politicians Really Paid Like Bureaucrats?

We provide the first empirical analysis of gubernatorial pay. Using US data for 1950-90 we document, contrary to widespread assumptions, substantial variation in the wages of politicians, both across states and over time. Gubernatorial wages respond to changes in state income per capita and taxes, after controlling for state and time fixed effects. The economic effects seem large: governors receive a 1 percent pay cut for each ten percent increase in per capita tax payments and a 4.5 percent increase in pay for each ten percent increase in income per capita in their states. There is strong evidence that the tax elasticity reflects a form of reward-for-performanc.' The evidence on the income elasticity of pay is less conclusive, but is suggestive of rent extraction' motives. Lastly, we find that democratic institutions seem to play an important role in shaping pay. For example, voter-initiatives and the presence of significant political opposition lead to large reductions in the income elasticity of pay, and to large increases (at least double) in the tax elasticities of pay, relative to the elasticities that are observed when these democratic institutions are weaker.