Macroeconomics - Background Papers

About

Countries

Data & Research

Learning

News

Projects & Operations

Publications

Topics

Home > Data & Research > Research > Programs > Macroeconomics > Publications > Background Papers

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

Author:	Hallward-Driemeier, Mary; Khun-Jush, Gita; Pritchett, Lant;	Collection Title:	Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5321
Country:	World;	Date Stored:	2010/05/26
Document Date:	2010/05/01	Document Type:	Policy Research Working Paper
Language:	English	Major Sector:	Industry and trade
Rel. Proj ID:	1W-Micro Dynamics And Macro Performance -- -- P104056;	Region:	The World Region
Report Number:	WPS5321	Sub Sectors:	General industry and trade sector
SubTopics:	Environmental Economics & Policies; Public Sector Corruption & Anticorruption Measures; Climate Change Policy and Regulation; Climate Change Economics; Microfinance	TF No/Name:	TF058171-INVESTMENT CLIMATE'S CONTRIBUTION TO GROWTH THROUGH FIRM DYNAMICS AND A; TF090797-MACROECONOMIC EFFECTS OF ALLOCATIVE EFFICIENCY
Volume No:	1 of 1

Summary: 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 Survey data, 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.


Official Documents Official, scanned versions of documents (may include signatures, etc.)
File Type		Description	File Size (mb)

	PDF 68 pages	Official version*	4.76 (approx.)
	Text	Text version**

	See documents related to this project

* The official version is derived from scanning the final, paper copy of the document and is the official,
archived version including all signatures, charts, etc.

** The text version is the OCR text of the final scanned version and is not an accurate representation of the final text.
It is provided solely to benefit users with slow connectivity.

Permanent URL for this page: http://go.worldbank.org/PJ8APUDH20