Research Output
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Publication
Are new states more corrupt? Expert opinions vs. firms’ experiences
2017-10, Adhikari, Tamanna, Breen, Michael, Gillanders, Robert
We find that new states are perceived to be more corrupt even though businesses do not report more bribery in newer states. This is suggestive of an unearned, and likely high, reputational cost to being a new state. These findings hold over a number of specifications that include additional economic, historical, and geographic controls.
Publication
Do Business-Friendly Reforms Boost GDP?
2019-12, Adhikari, Tamanna, Whelan, Karl
We use the time series variation in the World Bank’s “distance to frontier” estimates of the ease of doing business to assess the effects of changes in this variable on real GDP per capita. The use of Vector Autoregression techniques allows us to identify shocks to the ease of doing business that are initially uncorrelated with GDP, thus addressing an important endogeneity problem that affects the cross-sectional literature on this topic. The results are surprising. We report a robust finding that improvements to the ease of doing business have at least a temporary negative impact on GDP and find little evidence for a positive effect in the years following these improvements.