Jafar Olimov

I am a research fellow at Research Center SHARQ, Tajikistan, and a lecturer at the Department of Economics at Ohio State University.

My research interests are industrial organization and development economics.

At OSU, I teach Intermediate Microeconomics (sample syllabus).

"Search and Screening Costs of Bribes," working paper; [PDF}

I find that bribe-extorting bureaucrats are uninformed about firms' ability to pay bribes and exploit differences in firms' screening costs or opportunity costs of time to screen out firms with financial resources. In equilibrium, high-profit firms with cash holdings pay larger bribes in return for shorter paperwork processing times. The estimate of the opportunity cost of time is zero for negative-profit firms and positive for positive-profit firms. Firms also make voluntary bribe payments to bureaucrats in return for government services and face associated positive search costs. Results hold only for firms without bureaucratic connections.

Technical Report on Shadow Economy in Tajikistan in 2015; [PDF]

"Hold-up and Negotiation Timing," working paper; [PDF]

“Multidimensional Quality Sorting Between Online and Offline Auctions: The Role of Attribute Transparency” (with Brian Roe), International Journal of Industrial Organization (2017), 53: 145–169; [PDF]

“Pigs in Cyberspace: A Natural Experiment Testing Differences between Online and Offline Club-Pig Auctions” (with Brian Roe and Tim Wyszynski), American Journal of Agricultural Economics (2011), 93 (5): 1278-1291;