There is a widespread perception that trust and social capital have declined in United States as well as other advanced economies, while income inequality has tended to increase. While previous research has noted that measured trust declines as individuals become less similar to one another,...

Blacks in the United States have a lower geographic mobility rates than whites even though they have several characteristics that are usually associated with high rates of mobility: high unemployment, low rate of home ownership, low marriage rate and settlement in areas where unemployment is...

Gender gaps in womens' economic opportunities-labor market and entrepreneurship-have remained high inIndia. Lack of adequate collateral limits women entrepreneurs' ability to access formal finance, leaving them torely on informal sources, constraining their growth. A small-open economy DSGE...

As labor market data is scarce in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), this paper uses household survey data to analyze the determinants of the gender gap in the labor market and its welfare implications for five SSA countries in multinomial logit models with propensity score matching method. The analysis...

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns have led to a rise in gender-based violence. In this paper, we explore the economic consequences of violence against women in sub-Saharan Africa using large demographic and health survey data collected pre-pandemic. Relying on a two-stage least square method...

Libya is highly dependent on exhaustible and volatile hydrocarbon resources, which constitute the bulk of government revenues. Although resource wealth provides the means to promote socio-economic development, procyclical fiscal policies threaten macroeconomic stability as well as fiscal...

In this paper, we re-examine two important aspects of the dynamics of relative primary commodity prices, namely the secular trend and the short run volatility. To do so, we employ 25 series, some of them starting as far back as 1650 and powerful panel data stationarity tests that allow for...

This paper documents the determinants of real oil price in the global market based on SVAR model embedding transitory and permanent shocks on oil demand and supply as well as speculative disturbances. We find evidence of significant differences in the propagation mechanisms of transitory versus...

This paper assesses the performance of three types of commodity price forecasts--those based on judgment, those relying exclusively on historical price data, and those incorporating prices implied by commodity futures. For most of the 15 commodities in the sample, spot and futures prices appear...

This paper investigates the effect of timeliness in accessing the intermediate inputs on the trade pattern. In particular, any country that has a higher ability to transport goods on time has a comparative advantage in industries that place a higher value on the timely delivery of their inputs,...