Mohammad Amin - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Mohammad Amin

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2014

We use a sample of 144 countries over the period 2003-2013 to investigate the link between democr... more We use a sample of 144 countries over the period 2003-2013 to investigate the link between democratic institutions and regulatory reforms. Democracy may be conducive to reform, as politicians embrace growth-enhancing reforms to win elections. On the other hand, authoritarian regimes may not worry as much about public opinion and could undertake reforms that are painful in the short run but bring long-term benefits. We test these alternative hypotheses, using data on regulatory reforms from the World Bank's Doing Business database. The results provide mixed support for the hypothesis that democracy is good for regulatory reforms. We also show that regulatory reforms are more likely just after parliamentary elections in poor and middle-income countries.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2009

Democracy and Reforms * Empirical evidence on the relationship between democracy and economic ref... more Democracy and Reforms * Empirical evidence on the relationship between democracy and economic reforms is scarce, limited to few reforms and countries and for few years. This paper studies the impact of democracy on the adoption of economic reforms using a new dataset on reforms in the financial, capital, public, and banking sectors, product and labor markets, agriculture, and trade for 150 countries over the period 1960-2004. Democracy has a positive and significant impact on the adoption of economic reforms but there is no evidence that economic reforms foster democracy. Our results are robust to the inclusion of a large variety of controls and estimation strategies.

Empirical Economics, 2011

There is a large literature that finds that common law countries perform better than civil law co... more There is a large literature that finds that common law countries perform better than civil law countries in various aspects of the institutional environment. This article extends these findings to another dimension of institutional quality-the cost of registering property. In a sample of 121 countries, we find that the cost of registering property is lower by 26 percent of the world average in common law compared with civil law countries, a result largely driven by differences in non-notary costs of registering property. We provide plausible explanations for these findings.

Empirical Economics, 2013

It is argued that compared with large countries, small countries rely more on trade and therefore... more It is argued that compared with large countries, small countries rely more on trade and therefore they are more likely to adopt liberal trading policies. The present paper extends this idea beyond the conventional trade openness measures by analyzing the relationship between country size and the number of documents required to export and import, a measure of trade facilitation. Three important results follow. First, trade facilitation does improve as the country size becomes smaller; that is, small countries perform better than large countries in terms of trade facilitation. Second, the relationship between country size and trade facilitation is non-linear, much stronger for the relatively small than the large countries. Third, contrary to what the existing studies might suggest, the relationship between country size and trade facilitation does not appear to be driven by the fact that small countries trade more as a proportion of their GDP than the large countries. L'activité commerciale des petits pays est souvent considérée comme relativement plus intense, de sorte qu'ils apparaissent plus enclins à adopter des mesures de libéralisation commerciale. Cet article étend cette idée en dépassant les mesures traditionnelles d'ouverture au commerce à travers l'utilisation d'une nouvelle mesure reflétant le degré de facilités commerciales des pays à échanger. Précisément, nous analysons le lien entre la taille des pays et le nombre de document strictement nécessaire pour exporter ou importer. Cette étude met en avant trois résultats. Premièrement, les facilités à échanger sont relativement plus importantes pour les pays de petite taille. Ensuite, la relation existante entre la taille des pays et les facilités commerciales est non-linéaire. Si elle est très marquée pour les petites économies, elle devient moins évidente pour les grand pays. Enfin, contrairement à ce que les études existantes suggèrent, la relation que nous mettons en évidence ne dépend pas de la forte propension des petits pays à exporter.

Feminist Economics, 2015

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encoura... more The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.