Property rights, extortion and the misallocation of talent

Ashantha Ranasinghe

European Economic Review, 2017, vol. 98, issue C, 86-110

Abstract: Extortion is a severe obstacle to doing business in many countries, varying both in its frequency and magnitude across establishments. This paper presents a model of extortion to account for these features and assess its quantitative effects. In the model, entrepreneur capital is subject to extortion which affects the extensive and intensive margins of entrepreneurship. Extortion rates are endogenous and hump-shaped across entrepreneurs despite common property rights. The quantitative analysis is guided by micro-level evidence related to extortion in Poland and yields a number of implications broadly consistent with establishment-level facts in developing economies. For measures of property rights within a plausible range, output losses can be upwards of 10 percent.

Keywords: Extortion; Misallocation; Establishment size; Property rights (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O1 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Property Rights, Extortion and the Misallocation of Talent (2015)
Working Paper: Property Rights, Extortion and the Misallocation of Talent (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:98:y:2017:i:c:p:86-110

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2017.06.010

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