Research Notes

This project examines how the political power of market associations and local government effectiveness affect contractual trade and extortion in Lagos.

This study collected yearly historical data on 140 rural villages in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to identify the conditions under which armed groups can create institutions favorable to private sector development in areas over which the central state has little or no authority.

Using data collected from a sample of small firms in urban Zambia, this project investigates the existence of switching costs among Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) when borrowing from commercial banks, and finds no evidence of MSMEs getting ‘locked in’ by their main bank.

In this study of a large scale highway upgrade project in India, called the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ), Kerr, Grover and Ghani (2013) find several positive effects on the organized sector for non-nodal districts located in proximity with the GQ vis-à-vis other districts — most notably higher entry