All in the Family : State Capture in Tunisia

We examine the relationship between entry regulation and the business interests of former President Ben Ali’s family using firm-level data from Tunisia. Connected firms account for a disproportionate share of aggregate employment, output and profits, especially in sectors subject to authorization an...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Rijkers, Bob, Freund, Caroline, Nucifora, Antonio
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Elsevier 2016
Subjects:	regulation cronyism corruption rent-seeking firms
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25014

id	okr-10986-25014
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-250142021-05-25T10:54:42Z All in the Family : State Capture in Tunisia Rijkers, Bob Freund, Caroline Nucifora, Antonio regulation cronyism corruption rent-seeking firms We examine the relationship between entry regulation and the business interests of former President Ben Ali’s family using firm-level data from Tunisia. Connected firms account for a disproportionate share of aggregate employment, output and profits, especially in sectors subject to authorization and restrictions on FDI. Quantile regressions show that profit and market share premia from being connected increase along the firm-size distribution, especially in highly regulated sectors. These patterns are partly explained by Ben Ali’s relatives sorting into the most profitable sectors. The market shares of connected firms are positively correlated with exit and concentration rates in highly regulated sectors. Although causality is difficult to establish, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that the Ben Ali clan abused entry regulation for private gain at the expense of reduced competition. 2016-09-07T19:06:54Z 2016-09-07T19:06:54Z 2017-01 Journal Article Journal of Development Economics http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25014 en_US CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo/ World Bank Elsevier Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research Middle East and North Africa Tunisia
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	regulation cronyism corruption rent-seeking firms
spellingShingle	regulation cronyism corruption rent-seeking firms Rijkers, Bob Freund, Caroline Nucifora, Antonio All in the Family : State Capture in Tunisia
geographic_facet	Middle East and North Africa Tunisia
description	We examine the relationship between entry regulation and the business interests of former President Ben Ali’s family using firm-level data from Tunisia. Connected firms account for a disproportionate share of aggregate employment, output and profits, especially in sectors subject to authorization and restrictions on FDI. Quantile regressions show that profit and market share premia from being connected increase along the firm-size distribution, especially in highly regulated sectors. These patterns are partly explained by Ben Ali’s relatives sorting into the most profitable sectors. The market shares of connected firms are positively correlated with exit and concentration rates in highly regulated sectors. Although causality is difficult to establish, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that the Ben Ali clan abused entry regulation for private gain at the expense of reduced competition.
format	Journal Article
author	Rijkers, Bob Freund, Caroline Nucifora, Antonio
author_facet	Rijkers, Bob Freund, Caroline Nucifora, Antonio
author_sort	Rijkers, Bob
title	All in the Family : State Capture in Tunisia
title_short	All in the Family : State Capture in Tunisia
title_full	All in the Family : State Capture in Tunisia
title_fullStr	All in the Family : State Capture in Tunisia
title_full_unstemmed	All in the Family : State Capture in Tunisia
title_sort	all in the family : state capture in tunisia
publisher	Elsevier
publishDate	2016
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25014
_version_	1764458157799636992

All in the Family : State Capture in Tunisia

Similar Items