We analyze the US public sector balance sheet and project it forward under the assumption that current policies remain in place. We first document the history of the balance sheet and its components since World War II, with a detailed account of its evolution during and after the global...

This paper tests the theoretical framework developed by North, Wallis and Weingast (2009) on the transition from closed to open access societies. They posit that societies need to go through three doorsteps: the establishment of rule of law among elites; the adoption of perpetually existing...

We revisit Lipset's law, which posits a positive and significant relationship between income and democracy. Using dynamic and heterogeneous panel data estimation techniques, we find a significant and negative relationship between income and democracy: higher/lower incomes per capita...

China is on the eve of a demographic shift that will have profound consequences on its economic and social landscape. Within a few years the working age population will reach a historical peak, and then begin a precipitous decline. This fact, along with anecdotes of rapidly rising migrant wages...

We examine the role of household financial access in determining the extent of risk sharing in Nigeria using household-level panel data. We estimate changes in the response of consumption to shocks for households with formal and informal access to finance and those without, both for the country...

This paper examines the drivers, and reestimates the size of shadow economies in Europe, with a focus on the emerging economies, and recommends policies to increase formality. The size of shadow economies declined across Europe in recent years but remains significant, especially in Eastern...

We assess the aggregate productivity impact of distortions arising from labor regulations in Mexico and how they interact with informality. Using employment surveys and a firm-level economic census, we document a number of novel features about informal firms in Mexico. We then construct and...

While public education is often intended to be progressive in its effects on income distribution, in reality its incidence is often skewed toward the rich. This paper argues that the extent of this bias is directly related to institutional weaknesses in governance. We present a simple dynamic...

This paper is the first attempt to directly explore the long-run nonlinear relationship between theshadow economy and level of development. Using a dataset of 158 countries over the period from1996 to 2015, our results reveal a robust U-shaped relationship between the shadow economy sizeand GDP...

In sub-Saharan Africa women work relatively more in the informal sector than men. Many factors could explain this difference, including women's lower education levels, legal barriers, social norms and demographic characteristics. Cross-country comparisons indicate strong associations between...