This paper examines the asymmetric impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and oil price uncertainty (OPU) on inflation by using a Nonlinear ARDL (NARDL) model, which is compared to a benchmark linear ARDL one. Using monthly data from the 1990s until August 2022 for a number of developed and...

Why are average hours worked per adult lower in rich countries than in poor countries? We consider two natural explanations: income effects in preferences, in which leisure becomes more valuable when income rises, and distortionary tax systems, which are more prevalent in richer countries. To...

We examine the dynamic impact of household borrowing on the trade balance using data from 33 developing countries and 36 developed countries over the 1980-2017 period. Our findings suggest that the impact of household borrowing on the trade balance is by and large negative, both in the short and...

Interest-rate spreads fluctuate widely across time and countries. We characterize their behavior using some 3,200 quarterly observations for 21 advanced and 17 emerging economies since the early 1990s. Before the financial crisis, spreads are 10 times more volatile in emerging economies than in...

The paper reviews recent literature on the economics of migration and diasporas, focusing on economic gains and opportunities that these diasporas could represent for home countries. In addition, the paper discusses policies aimed at leveraging this "diaspora capital"

This paper provides new evidence on the stochastic behaviour of the EPU (Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) index constructed by Baker et al. (2016) in six of the biggest economies (Canada, France, Japan, US, Ireland, and Sweden) over the period from January 1985 to October 2019. In particular,...

This paper analyzes the optimal tax system consisting of the tax rate and the capacity of the tax administration. I challenge the conventional wisdom that tax rates and tax administrations' capacity are complements showing that their relationship depends on a country's level of development....

We examine how trade openness influences income inequality within countries. The sample includes 139 countries over the period 1970-2014. We employ predicted openness as instrument to deal with the endogeneity of trade openness. The effect of trade openness on income inequality differs across...

This paper analyzes the initial impact and recovery of globally engaged firms from the COVID-19 crisis. It uses rich survey data of nearly 65,000 firm-year observations in 45 countries spanning three waves of data collection. The findings are organized in a series of stylized facts, which...