Deals versus rules: policy implementation uncertainty and why firms hate it

Mary Hallward-Driemeier, Gita Khun-Jush and Lant Pritchett

No 5321, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Firms in Africa report"regulatory and economic policy uncertainty"as a top constraint to their growth. This paper argues that often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals: firm-specific policy actions that can be influenced by firm actions (such as bribes) and characteristics (such as political connections). Using Enterprise Surveydata, the paper demonstrates huge variability in reported policy actions across firms notionally facing the same policy. The within-country dispersion in firm-specific policy actions is larger than the cross-national differences in average policy. The analysis shows that variability in this policy implementation uncertainty within location-sector-size cells is correlated with firm growth rates. These measures of implementation variability are more strongly related to lower firm employment growth than are measures of"average"policy action. The paper shows that the de jure measures such as Doing Business indicators are virtually uncorrelated with ex-post firm-level responses, further evidence that deals rather than rules prevail in Africa. Strikingly, the gap between de jure and de facto conditions grows with the formal regulatory burden. The evidence also shows more burdensome processes open up more space for making deals; firms may not incur the official costs of compliance, but they still pay to avoid them. Finally, measures of institutional capacity and better governance are closely associated with perceived consistency in implementation.

Keywords: Environmental Economics&Policies; Microfinance; Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures; Climate Change Policy and Regulation; Climate Change Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-env and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Related works:
Chapter: Deals versus Rules: Policy Implementation Uncertainty and Why Firms Hate It (2014)
Working Paper: Deals Versus Rules: Policy Implementation Uncertainty and Why Firms Hate It (2010)
Working Paper: Deals versus Rules: Policy Implementation Uncertainty and Why Firms Hate It (2010)
Working Paper: Deals Versus Rules: Policy Implementation Uncertainty and Why Firms Hate It (2010)
Working Paper: Deals versus Rules: Policy Implementation Uncertainty and Why Firms Hate It (2010)
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