Licensing Procedures in Developing Countries: Should They Be Part of the Set-up Process?

Zhang Qing () and Anthony Ogus

No 30671, Centre on Regulation and Competition (CRC) Working papers from University of Manchester, Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM)

Abstract: Surveys have shown that, in general, developing countries tend to regulate the set-up processes for firms more intensively than developed countries. In particular, while many developing countries tend to integrate licensing requirements in the set-up process ('set-up licensing'), the more developed countries generally use licensing procedures independent of the set-up process ('independent licensing'). Set-up licensing requirements must be met before an enterprise can lawfully exist and operate in any respect. In contrast, an independent licensing system merely requires authorisation for the particular activities that are to be controlled, and this does not affect the right of the firm to exist and engage in other business activities. More importantly, set-up licensing may impose more compliance costs on entrepreneurs, more administrative costs on officials and more welfare losses on consumers than independent licensing. In this paper we explore the distinction to see whether the widespread preference for set-up licensing in developing countries can be justified on public interest grounds, or at least explained on private interest grounds.

Keywords: Public; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/30671/files/cr050091.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:idpmcr:30671

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.30671

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Centre on Regulation and Competition (CRC) Working papers from University of Manchester, Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().