We examine trends in wage inequality in the US and other countries over the past four decades. We show that there has been a secular increase in the 90-50 wage differential in the US and the UK since the late 1970s. By contrast the 50-10 differential rose mainly in the 1980s and flattened or...

Labor’s share of GDP in most OECD countries has declined over the last two decades. Some authors have suggested that these changes are linked to deregulation of product and labor markets. To examine this we focus on a large quasi-experiment in the OECD: the privatization of many network...

This article estimates the effect of visa restrictions on bilateral trade flows and foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks. By raising the costs of travel and deterring some visitors, visa restrictions hamper personal contact across borders, which is detrimental to trade and FDI. Employing a...

To increase inward foreign direct investment (FDI), policy makers increasingly resort to the ratification of double taxation treaties (DTTs). However, the effectiveness of DTTs in inducing higher FDI is still open to debate, as the empirical evidence of existing studies is anything but...

We analyse the role of financial sector workers in the huge rise of the share of earnings going to those at the very top of the pay distribution in the UK. Rising bankers' bonuses accounted for two-thirds of the increase in the share of the top 1% after 1999. Surprisingly, bankers' share of...

Economic damage from natural hazards can sometimes be prevented and always mitigated. However, private individuals tend to underinvest in such measures due to problems of collective action, information asymmetry and myopic behavior. Governments, which can in principle correct these market...

Recent scholarship on exchange rate regime choice seeks to explain why some countries fix their exchange rate to an anchor currency, but it neglects the question to which currency countries peg. This article posits that an understanding of the choice of anchor currency also improves political...