The 2007-09 Great Recession has led to an unprecedented increase in public debt in many countries, triggering substantial fiscal adjustments. What are the distributional consequences of fiscal austerity measures? This is an important policy question. This paper analyzes the effects of fiscal...

Can a government reduce income inequality by changing the composition of public spending while keeping the total level of expenditure fixed? Using newly assembled data on spending composition for 83 countries across all income groups, this paper shows that reallocating spending toward social...

Income inequality in Latin America has declined during the last decade, in contrast to the experience in many other emerging and developed regions. However, Latin America remains the most unequal region in the world. This study documents the declining trend in income inequality in Latin America...

This paper uses an individual-level survey conducted by the Edelman Trust Barometer in mid-April for 11 advanced and emerging market economies to examine perceptions of government performance in managing the health and economic crisis, beliefs about the future, and attitudes about...

This paper explores the impact of fiscal and labor market policies on efficiency, inequality, and fiscal outcomes in France. We extend the general equilibrium model calibrated for France by Alla and others (2015), with measures of labor and capital income for different groups in the economy (the...

Using microdata from nationally representative household and labor force surveys, we study the impact and drivers of poverty and inequality in India during the pandemic. We have three main findings. First, India has made significant progress in reducing poverty in recent decades, but the...

The paper surveys the role of financial markets and fiscal institutions in the transformation process going on in Eastern and Central Europe. It highlights (a) the need to create some sort of quot;social ecological balancequot; necessary for the working of a modern market economy; (b) the need...

Studies of the empirical relationship between income and mortality often rely on data aggregated by geographic areas and broad population groups and do not distinguish disabled and nondisabled persons. We investigate the relationship between individual mortality and lifetime income with a large...

With the recent jump in world oil prices, the issue of petroleum product pricing has become increasingly important in developing countries. Reflecting a reluctance of many governments to pass these price increases onto energy users, energy price subsidies are absorbing an increasing share of...

Work absence is an important part of the individual decision on actual working hours. This paper focuses on sickness absence in Europe and develops a stylized model where absence is part of the labor-leisure decision made by workers and the production decision made by profit-maximizing firms,...