This paper discusses the evolution of the household debt in Australia and finds that while higher-income and higher-wealth households tend to have higher debt, lower-income households may become more vulnerable to rising debt service over time. Then, the paper analyzes the impact of a monetary...

Historically high household debt in several economies is calling for a deleveraging, but according to some economists, this adjustment can slow GDP growth by weighing on consumption. Using a sample of advanced and emerging market economies, this paper finds evidence of a negative relationship...

This paper examines the determinants of female labor force participation in India, against the backdrop of India having one of the lowest participation rates for women among peer countries. Using extensive Indian household survey data, we model the labor force participation choices of women,...

A key feature of developing economies is that wages in agriculture are significantly below those of other sectors. Using Brazilian household surveys and administrative panel data, I use information on workers who switch sectors to decompose the drivers of this gap. I find that most of the gap is...

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...

Achieving fiscal consolidation without undermining growth and poverty-reduction efforts is a key policy challenge in many countries. Using India as an illustration, this paper shows how a mix of well-designed taxation and spending policies can help address these challenges. On the tax side, the...

Exploiting a granular panel dataset that breaks down capital inflows into FDI, portfolio and other categories, and distinguishes between credit to the household sector and to the corporate sector, we investigate the association between capital inflows and credit growth. We find that non-FDI...

Can fintech credit fill the credit gap in the consumer and business segments? There are few cross-country studies that explore this question. Focusing on marketplace lending, an important part of fintech credit, we use data for 109 countries from 2015 to 2017 to study the relationship between...