Decentralization of fiscal responsibilities has emerged as a primary objective on the agendas of national governments, and international organizations alike. Yet there is little empirical evidence on the potential benefits of this intervention. The authors fill in some quantitative evidence....

The authors develop a model of optimal growth to assess the risks of an HIV/AIDS epidemic and the expected economic impact in nine countries in the Middle East and North Africa region-Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen. The model incorporates an HIV/AIDS...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model to analyze the marginal and joint impacts that alternative macroeconomic, education, and social protection policies have on the dynamics of employment and unemployment by skill level. The model introduces a disaggregated treatment of the labor...

In this paper the authors reconsider the idea of an earnings-related pension system with reserves invested in indexed government bonds as a mechanism to both ensure financial sustainability and improve security. They start by reviewing the characterization of the sustainable rate of return of an...