African agricultural markets are characterized by low farmer revenues and high consumer food prices. Many have worried that this wedge is partially driven by imperfect competition among intermediaries.
Alfonsi, Bandiera, Bassi, Burgess, Rasul, Sulaiman and Vitali (2020) design a labor market experiment to compare demand- and supply-side policies to tackle youth unemployment, a key issue in low-income countries.
In all modern bureaucracies, politicians retain some discretion in public employment decisions, which may lead to frictions in the selection process if political connections substitute for individual competence.
This paper, by He, Wang and Zhang (2020), estimates the effect of environmental regulation on firm productivity using a spatial regression discontinuity design implicit in China's water quality monitoring system.
Garlick, Orkin and Quinn (2020) analyzes the effects of differences in survey frequency and medium on microenterprise survey data. A sample of enterprises were randomly assigned to monthly in-person, weekly in-person, or weekly phone surveys for a 12-week panel.
Despite the depiction of decisions to formalize informal firms as rational and ethical, many entrepreneurs in developing countries continue to operate informally regardless of its perceived illicit status.
