This paper examines oversight issues that underlie the potential growth and risks in mobile payments. International experience suggests that financial authorities can develop effective oversight frameworks for new payment methods to safeguard public confidence and financial stability by...

Laws governing the foreclosure process can have direct consequences on the costs of foreclosure and could therefore affect lending decisions. We exploit the heterogeneity in the judicial requirements across U.S. states to examine their impact on banks' lending decisions in a sample of urban...

Does greater product market competition improve external competitiveness and growth? This paper examines this question by using country-and firm-level data for a sample of 39 sub-Saharan African countries over 2000-17, as well as other emerging market economies and developing countries, and...

Using a new firm-level dataset on private and listed firms from 20 countries, we documentfive stylized facts on market power in global markets. First, competition has declinedaround the world, measured as a moderate increase in average firm markups during 2000-2015. Second, the markup increase...

We combine a structural model with cross-sectional micro data to identify the causes andconsequences of rising concentration in the US economy. Using asset prices and industrydata, we estimate realized and anticipated shocks that drive entry and concentration. Wevalidate our approach by showing...

Tourism has become the main driver of economic growth and employment and the most important source of income in the ECCU. Preserving and, possibly, enhancing the competitiveness of the tourism product is key for these countries. Unfortunately, the evidence shows that tourism arrivals to the ECCU...

Which structural reforms affect the speed the regional convergence within a country? We found that domestic financial development, trade/current account openness, better institutional infrastructure, and selected labor market reforms facilitate regional convergence. However, these reforms have...

This paper draws on existing empirical literature and an original theoretical model to argue that globalization and skill supply affect the extent to which technology adoption in developing countries favors skilled workers. Developing countries are experiencing technical change that is...

Digital connectivity, including through the modern cellular network technologies, is expected to play a key role for the Future of Work in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We estimate the cost of introducing a full-scale 4G network by 2025 in SSA and an operable 5G network by 2040. We adapt the costing...

A defining feature of transition economies is the expansion of the private sector. Motivated by the observation that new enterprises in transition economies seem to have a strong preference for recruiting young people, this paper studies intergenerational redistribution following from market...