We study the effects on financial markets and real economic activity of changes in risk related to political events and policy announcements in Italy during the 2013-2019 period that saw the rise to power of populist parties. We focus on events that have implications for budgetary policy, debt...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of an intervention that was targeted at a specific group of Dutch Social Assistance (SA) recipients with debt problems. With a large share of the income gains of work resumption were transferred to the creditors, these individuals experienced a strong a...

Is there a role for debt beyond curing overaccumulation of capital? Does dynamic efficiency and the infeasibility of debt Ponzi schemes eliminate any Pareto-improving role for a government in a competitive economy with complete markets? Is there an optimal maturity structure of public debt?...

When facing financial distress, French households can file a case to a "households' over-indebtedness commission" (HDC). The HDC can order an immediate repayment or grant a debt suspension. Exploiting the random assignment of bankruptcy filings to managers, we show that a debt suspension has a...

We study the labor market and mental health impacts of debt relief among financially vulnerable individuals. We exploit a cutoff rule used by a Dutch welfare office to determine eligibility to debt relief of welfare debts. We use this cutoff as an instrument in both a fuzzy regression...

Individuals with extensive debt may be granted debt relief in court. We provide a comprehensive evaluation of the Danish debt relief program with data from court records linked to nationwide register data. Using event-study methods and quasi-random assignment of applicants to court trustees with...

Although the theoretical literature often uses lobbying and corruption synonymously, the empirical literature associates lobbying with the preferred mean for exerting influence in developed countries and corruption with the preferred one in developing countries. This paper challenges these...

Child labor is a persistent phenomenon in many developing countries. In recent years, support has been growing among rich-country governments and consumer groups for the use of trade policies, such as product boycotts and the imposition of international labor standards, to reduce child labor in...

This study is a review of the recent trends in development economics research. The focus is on the development in the recent decades as a result of increased globalization of knowledge, technologies and economies. In particular I look at the development in a number area where similar trends are...

Starting from the recent UNICEF publications on child poverty in the developed countries, which received a wide audience in the political and scientific world, in this paper we further analyze the UNICEF study data base and present three composite indices that are multidimensional and...