Unconventional forms of international trade (such as counterpurchase, compensation deals and barter) have assumed rapidly growing importance, especially in many developing countries, as a consequence of the fall in commodity prices and the worsening of international debt problems since the oil...

The dispute between the proponents of the market-economy road to development for the countries of the Third World and the advocates of the socialist road is an old one. Too often have the arguments been based on ideology rather than on facts. The recent publication by the World, Bank of...

Emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) have experienced an extraordinary decline in inflation since the early 1970s. After peaking in 1974 at 17.3 percent, inflation in these economies declined to 3.5 percent in 2017. Despite a checkered history of managing inflation among many EMDEs,...

The relationship between the length of paid maternity leave and the proportion of female workers in the private sector is explored using firm-level survey data for 66 mostly developing countries. The paper finds a large, positive, and statistically significant relationship between the two....

This paper studies the effects of global and domestic inflation shocks on core price inflation in 105 countries between 1970 and 2016, by using a heterogeneous panel vector-autoregressive model. The methodology allows accounting for differences across groups of countries (advanced economies,...

For a sample of 53 developing countries, the results show that women's employment among private firms is significantly higher in countries that mandate paternity leave versus those that do not. A conservative estimate suggests an increase of 6.8 percentage points in the proportion of women...

Economic theory predicts that a rise in police presence will reduce criminal activity. However several studies in the literature have found mixed results. This study adds to the literature by exploring the relationship between the size of the police force and crime experienced by firms. Using...

Several studies explore the differences in men?s and women?s labor market participation rates and wages. Some of these differences have been linked to gender disparities in education attainment and access. The present paper contributes to this literature by analyzing the relationship between the...