IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jpolrf/v25y2022i4p361-387.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Doing business in a deals world: the doubly false premise of rules reform

Author

Listed:
  • Sabyasachi Kar
  • Lant Pritchett
  • Spandan Roy
  • Kunal Sen

Abstract

The Doing Business reports have evoked an intense policy debate about whether countries should simplify regulatory rules or make them more stringent. We argue that doing business in developing countries is based on deals struck between firms and the state, rather than rules. We show that there is a weak relationship between rules and deals, and at low levels of state capability, more stringent rules leading to less compliance, rather than more. We provide a diagnostic approach to rules reform where the appropriate reform depend on the level of stringency of the rules, and the level of its state capability.

Suggested Citation

  • Sabyasachi Kar & Lant Pritchett & Spandan Roy & Kunal Sen, 2022. "Doing business in a deals world: the doubly false premise of rules reform," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 361-387, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jpolrf:v:25:y:2022:i:4:p:361-387
    DOI: 10.1080/17487870.2022.2125391
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17487870.2022.2125391
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17487870.2022.2125391?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Bank, 2018. "Doing Business 2018," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 28608.
    2. Chekir Hamouda & Diwan Ishac, 2014. "Crony Capitalism in Egypt," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 177-211, December.
    3. Ishac Diwan & Philip Keefer & Marc Schiffbauer, 2020. "Pyramid capitalism: Cronyism, regulation, and firm productivity in Egypt," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 211-246, January.
    4. Pritchett, Lant & Sethi, Geeta, 1994. "Tariff Rates, Tariff Revenue, and Tariff Reform: Some New Facts," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 8(1), pages 1-16, January.
    5. Hellman, Joel S. & Jones, Geraint & Kaufmann, Daniel, 2003. "Seize the state, seize the day: state capture and influence in transition economies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 751-773, December.
    6. Gauthier, Bernard & Gersovitz, Mark, 1997. "Revenue erosion through exemption and evasion in Cameroon, 1993," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 407-424, June.
    7. repec:bla:devpol:v:24:y:2006:i:4:p:387-411 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Rijkers, Bob & Freund, Caroline & Nucifora, Antonio, 2017. "All in the family: State capture in Tunisia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 41-59.
    9. Andrews, Matt & Pritchett, Lant & Woolcock, Michael, 2017. "Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198747482.
    10. World Bank, 2019. "An Opportunity for All [Una Oportunidad para Todos]," World Bank Publications - Reports 32816, The World Bank Group.
    11. Antonio Savoia & Kunal Sen, 2015. "Measurement, Evolution, Determinants, And Consequences Of State Capacity: A Review Of Recent Research," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 441-458, July.
    12. Sangheon Lee & Deirdre McCann & Nina Torm, 2008. "The World Bank's “Employing Workers” index: Findings and critiques – A review of recent evidence," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 147(4), pages 416-432, December.
    13. Mary Hallward-Driemeier & Lant Pritchett, 2015. "How Business Is Done in the Developing World: Deals versus Rules," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 121-140, Summer.
    14. Raymond Fisman, 2001. "Estimating the Value of Political Connections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1095-1102, September.
    15. Esther Duflo & Michael Greenstone & Rohini Pande & Nicholas Ryan, 2013. "What Does Reputation Buy? Differentiation in a Market for Third-Party Auditors," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 314-319, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Weiwei Chen, 2021. "The dynamics of state-business relations between the Ethiopian state and Chinese private firms: A case study of the Eastern Industry Park," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-122, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Christina Wolf, 2024. "Construction as a Springboard for Industrialisation: Chinese Overseas Construction Projects and Structural Transformation in Angola, Ethiopia and Nigeria," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 36(3), pages 639-667, June.
    3. Shuichiro Nishioka & Sumi Sharma & Tuan Le, 2023. "Political Regimes and Firms' Decisions to Pay Bribes: Theory and Evidence from Firm-level Surveys," Working Papers 23-04, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    4. Joanna Próchniak & Renata Płoska & Anna Zamojska & Błażej Lepczyński & Giuseppe T. Cirella, 2023. "Maturity Analysis of Stock Exchanges in Africa: Prepandemic Sustainability Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-18, April.
    5. Tamanna Adhikari & Karl Whelan, 2019. "Do Business-Friendly Reforms Boost GDP?," Working Papers 201930, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    6. Adhikari, Tamanna & Whelan, Karl, 2023. "Did raising doing business scores boost GDP?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 1011-1030.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francis,David C. & Kubinec ,Robert, 2022. "Beyond Political Connections : A Measurement Model Approach to Estimating Firm-levelPolitical Influence in 41 Economies," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10119, The World Bank.
    2. Ruckteschler, Christian & Malik, Adeel & Eibl, Ferdinand, 2022. "Politics of trade protection in an autocracy: Evidence from an EU tariff liberalization in Morocco," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    3. Nesma Ali & Boris Najman, 2019. "Cronyism, firms’ Productivity and Informal Competition in Egypt," Working Papers 1292, Economic Research Forum, revised 2019.
    4. Mary Hallward-Driemeier & Lant Pritchett, 2015. "How Business Is Done in the Developing World: Deals versus Rules," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 121-140, Summer.
    5. Joël CARIOLLE, 2016. "The voracity and scarcity effects of export booms and busts on bribery," Working Papers P146, FERDI.
    6. Lant Pritchett & Mary Hallward-Driemeier, 2010. "How Business is Done and the 'Doing Business' Indicators: The Investment Climate when Firms have Climate Control," CID Working Papers 211, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    7. Daron Acemoglu & Tarek A. Hassan & Ahmed Tahoun, 2018. "The Power of the Street: Evidence from Egypt’s Arab Spring," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(1), pages 1-42.
    8. Christian Ruckteschler & Adeel Malik & Ferdinand Eib, 2019. "The Politics of Trade Protection: Evidence from an EU-mandated Tari Liberalization in Morocco," CSAE Working Paper Series 2019-12, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    9. Jintao Zhang & Zhen Yang & Li Meng & Lu Han, 2022. "Environmental regulations and enterprises innovation performance: the role of R&D investments and political connections," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 4088-4109, March.
    10. Hallward-Driemeier,Mary C. & Kochanova,Anna & Rijkers,Bob, 2020. "Does Democratization Promote Competition? : Indonesian Manufacturing Pre and Post Suharto," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9112, The World Bank.
    11. Zengji Song & Abraham Nahm & Zongyi Zhang, 2015. "The value of partial state ownership in publicly listed private sector enterprises: evidence from China," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 336-353, September.
    12. Robert Kubinec, 2018. "Patrons or Clients? Measuring and Experimentally Evaluating Political Connections of Firms in Morocco and Jordan," Working Papers 1280, Economic Research Forum, revised 26 Dec 2018.
    13. Chune Young Chung & Jung Hoon Byun & Jason Young, 2019. "Corporate Political Ties and Firm Value: Comparative Analysis in the Korean Market," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-25, January.
    14. Canen, Nathan & Ch, Rafael & Wantchekon, Leonard, 2023. "Political uncertainty and the forms of state capture," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    15. Bob Rijkers & Leila Baghdadi & Gael Raballand, 2017. "Political Connections and Tariff Evasion Evidence from Tunisia," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 31(2), pages 459-482.
    16. Auriol, Emmanuelle & Straub, Stéphane & Flochel, Thomas, 2016. "Public Procurement and Rent-Seeking: The Case of Paraguay," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 395-407.
    17. repec:zbw:bofitp:2013_006 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Masami Imai, 2006. "Mixing Family Business with Politics in Thailand," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 241-256, September.
    19. Toby Stuart & Yanbo Wang, 2016. "Who cooks the books in China, and does it pay? Evidence from private, high‐technology firms," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(13), pages 2658-2676, December.
    20. Lee, Mina & Mutlu, Canan & Lee, Seung-Hyun, 2023. "Bribery and Firm Growth: Sensemaking in CEE and Post-Soviet Countries," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(1).
    21. Feng, Xunan & Johansson, Anders C. & Zhang, Tianyu, 2015. "Mixing business with politics: Political participation by entrepreneurs in China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 220-235.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jpolrf:v:25:y:2022:i:4:p:361-387. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GPRE19 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.