This paper takes stock of the economic performance of resource rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the past forty years. While those countries have maintained high levels of income per capita, they have performed poorly when going beyond the assessment based on...

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...

This paper investigates the main determinants of income inequality in transition countries during the period 1990-2018. To this end, we address a major methodological challenge that lies at the core of the cross-country literature on income inequality: the potential endogeneity of income growth,...

We study a model where an employer, trying to fill a vacancy, engages in optimal sequential search by drawing from two subpopulations of candidates who differ in their quot;discourse systemsquot;: during an interview, a minority candidate with a discourse system not shared with the employer...

This paper provides new evidence of the effect of monetary policy shocks on income inequality. Using a measure of unanticipated changes in policy rates for a panel of 32 advanced and emerging market countries over the period 1990-2013, the paper finds that contractionary (expansionary) monetary...

We show that too much meritocracy, modeled as accuracy of performance ranking incontests, can be a bad thing: in contests with homogeneous agents, it reduces output and isPareto inefficient. In contests with sufficiently heterogeneous agents, discouragement andcomplacency effects further reduce...

We posit that the relationship between income inequality and economic growth ismediated by the level of equality of opportunity, which we identify with intergenerationalmobility. In economies characterized by intergenerational rigidities, an increase in incomeinequality has persistent...

This paper examines the origins and use of the concept of Gross National Happiness (or subjective well-being) in the Kingdom of Bhutan, and the relationship between measured well-being and macroeconomic indicators. While there are only a few national surveys of Gross National Happiness in...

This paper provides evidence of a strong relationship between the short-term dynamics of growth and inequality in developing economies. We find that reductions in inequality during growth upswings are largely reversed during growth slowdowns. Using a new methodology (mediation analysis), we...

This paper discusses the definition and modelling of a universal basic income (UBI). Afterclarifying the debate about what a UBI is and presenting the arguments in favor and against,an analytical approach for its assessment is proposed. The adoption of a UBI as a policy tool isdiscussed with...