The concept of the "employment threshold" plays an important role in the public of unemployment. The employment threshold is defined as that growth rate of output which is necessary to keep employment constant despite the continuous rise in labor productivity. It is related to the Okun...

This paper surveys the empirical literature on the association between growth on inequality in less developed countries, with a particular emphasis on labor market inequality. Cross-country studies failed to find a clear link from growth to inequality. Country-specific studies that focused on...

Considerable concern has been expressed in resent years about declines in voter participartion rates in the United States and in several other major democratic countries. Some feel low participation rates intropuce a "class bias" into the political process and thereby worsen the outcomes from...

Rational politicians are interested in judicial independence (JI) in order to make their promises credible. But if politicians' preferences deviate from the dicta of the judiciary, they also have incentives to renege on judicial independence. These two conflicting aspects are measured by two...

This lecture addresses three related aspects of monetary and fiscal management in Europe and elsewhere. First, I discuss the implications of economic integration for monetary and fiscal policy, especially the narrow focus on low inflation as the main objective of monetary policy. I argue that...

This paper focuses on the role of "institutions" in the fight against poverty and inequality. Our view of institutions encompasses formal rules designed by polity (including those in the legal and economics sphere such as rules of property rights, contracts and liabilities) as well as informal...

There is much disagreement about both the facts and the explanations of income inequality. Even if we confine attention to OECD countries, we find people arguing that there has been a great U-turn, with inequality rising sharply after its post war fall, and others who believe that the speed of...

Using various statistical procedures, estimates about the size of the shadow economy in 110 developing, transition and OECD countries are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (in percent of official GDP) over 1999-2000 in developing countries is 41 percent, in transition countries...

This paper attempts to reconcile the apparent contradiction between two strands of the literature on the effects of financial intermediation on economic activity. On the one hand, the empirical growth literature finds a positive effect of financial depth as measured by, for instance, private...