We provide estimates of impacts on maternal mortality of swings in US aid for family planning and maternal health driven by switches in implementation of the Global Gag Rule (GGR) with US Presidential Party. The GGR is a pro-life policy that prohibits aid to overseas non-governmental...

We revisit the link between poverty, the middle class and institutional outcomes using a newly developed cross-country panel dataset containing detailed information on the distribution of income and expenditures. When the size of the middle class increases (measured as the proportion of people...

Utilitarian foundations for limited government are shaky insofar as they assume rational and consistent individuals. Recently economists' assumption of rational actors has come under sustained attack. Behavioural economics has suggested that people are plagued by irrational biases and...

This paper examines whether the introduction of corporate governance (CG) reforms in general and that of transparency and disclosure (T&D) rules in particular can necessarily boost firm performance. Existing literature suggests that CG reforms can boost performance because it can resolve the...

In this paper, we study how wage mobility in the low-wage sector has changed in western Germany between 1984 and 2004. Using German individual register data, we document a clear upward trend in the persistence of low-wage employment for both men and women. Next to compositional shifts of the...

This paper provides new insights into the role of governments and businesses in responding to pandemics in the Arab region. It uses the COVID-19 World Bank Enterprise Survey Follow-up dataset to examine the degree of business endurance in Jordan and Morocco amid the pandemic. Relying on the...

We explore the country-specific institutional characteristics likely to influence an individual's decision to become an entrepreneur. We focus on the size of the government, on freedom from corruption, and on 'market freedom' defined as a cluster of variables related to protection of property...

In this paper we aim to trace the roots of the ongoing economic mayhem and to unmask the chorus of the tragedy which plays on the world stage. The main thesis of our work is that, despite the triumphant rhetoric praising the merits of perfect competition, the global fields of the dysfunctional...

We investigate emigrant self-selection according to institutional quality using up to 3,566 observations on bilateral migration flows from 77 countries over the 1990-2000 period. We relate these flows to differences in political and economic institutions. We improve and expand upon previous...

Neoliberal politics in China have changed the roles of, and the interrelationships between, the state, the market and society in urban restructuring. Since 2008, the central state has initiated the Shantytown Redevelopment Projects (SRPs) to improve the living conditions of low-income residents....