This paper studies the distributive impact of institutional change in developing countries. In such economies, economic institutions, such as property rights systems, may act to preserve the interests of an influential minority, but this depends crucially on the level of political equality. For...

In the last decades, and particularly in the Nineties, the European Economy has been widely characterised by regional disparities. This paper aims to evaluate if different regional economic structures, such as productive mix and labour market composition, contribute to this disarities and to...

This paper analyses the impact of the speed of transition reforms on economic growth in transition countries in the context of the debate big-bang versus gradualist approach. It builds a new indicator for the speed of transition reforms based on a three-way principal component analysis. It shows...

Higher inequality reduces capital accumulation and increases the informal economy, which creates additional employment opportunities for low-skilled and deprived people. As a result, informal employment leads to beneficial effects on income distribution by providing sources of income for...

Higher inequality reduces capital accumulation and increases the informal economy, which creates additional employment opportunities for low-skilled and deprived people. Despite this positive feedback, informality raises problems for public finances and biases official statistics, reducing the...

The European economy is characterised by marked regional differences. In this paper we shall propose some direct methods, using variables of the labour market, of economic branches value added to measure such differences and their evolution in time. In the first section we shall analyse regional...