In this paper, we examine the growth effects of government expenditure for a panel of 30 developing countries over the 1970s and 1980s, with a particular focus on disaggregated government expenditures. Our methodology improves on previous research on this topic by explicitly recognizing the role of the government budget constraint and the possible biases arising from omitted variables. Our primary results are twofold. First, the share of government capital expenditure in GDP is positively and significantly correlated with economic growth, but current expenditure is insignificant. Second, at the disaggregated level, government investment in education and total expenditures in education are the only outlays that are significantly associated with growth once the budget constraint and omitted variables are taken into consideration. Copyright � 2007 The Authors; Journal compilation � 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and The University of Manchester.

Economic development and bureaucratic corruption are determined jointly in a dynamic general equilibrium model of growth, bribery and tax evasion. Corruption arises from the incentives of public and private agents to conspire in the concealment of information from the government. These incentives depend on aggregate economic activity which, in turn, depends on the incidence of corruption. The model produces multiple development regimes, transition between which may or may not occur. In accordance with recent empirical evidence, the relationship between corruption and development is predicted to be negative. r

a b s t r a c tWe study the relationship between the underground economy and financial development in a model of tax evasion and bank intermediation. Agents with heterogeneous skills seek loans in order to undertake risky investment projects. Asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders implies a menu of loan contracts that induce self-selection in a separating equilibrium. Faced with these contracts, agents choose how much of their income to declare by trading off their incentives to offer collateral against their disincentives to comply with tax obligations. The key implication of the analysis is that the marginal net benefit of income disclosure increases with the level of financial development. Thus, in accordance with empirical observation, we establish the result that the lower is the stage of such development, the higher is the incidence of tax evasion and the greater is the size of the underground economy.Published by Elsevier B.V.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between banking development and the size of shadow economies by employing data on 137 countries over the period from 1995 to 2007. Both cross-sectional and panel analysis suggest that an improvement in the development of the banking sector is associated with a smaller shadow economy. In addition, the authors find that both the depth and the efficiency of the banking sector matter in reducing the size of shadow economies. These results are robust to a variety of specifications that address multi-colinearity and endogeneity issues. Design/methodology/approach -Empirical cross-section and panel analysis were undertaken. Findings -The authors find that both the depth and the efficiency of the banking sector matter in reducing the size of shadow economies. Originality/value -This paper is original. Existing literature has identified a number of factors (e.g. the burden of taxation or regulation, the quality of government, legal enforcement, corruption, etc.) that create such incentives. In this paper the authors highlight another factor -the level of banking development -as a determinant of the shadow economy.