Courts and Business Registration : Evidence from Serbia
This paper studies the effects of a reform in Serbia that transferred business registration from regional courts to a centralized agency. Using administrative data, the analysis employs a difference-in-difference strategy that compares new firms...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/834991539264667624/Courts-and-Business-Registration-Evidence-from-Serbia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30579 |
| Summary: | This paper studies the effects of a
reform in Serbia that transferred business registration from
regional courts to a centralized agency. Using
administrative data, the analysis employs a
difference-in-difference strategy that compares new firms
before and after the reform across districts based on the
level of distrust in regional courts. The results suggest
that the reform increased the number of new firms more in
regions with higher initial levels of distrust, by up to 34
percent. The reform also increased the survival rates of new
firms. These effects are large compared to those of other
types of registration reforms, suggesting that courts can
pose significant barriers to new firm creation. |
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