This study examines whether political empowerment of women affects their economic participation. In the context of mandated political representation reform for women in India, the study finds that the length of exposure to women politicians affects overall female labor force participation. These...

The global financial crisis and its aftermath have triggered extraordinary policy responses in advanced countries. The impacts of these policy responses—from asset price bubbles to currency depreciations—have often been felt in the developing world. As tapering talk evolves into actual...

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, interest in systemic risk has surged among academics and policy makers. The mitigation of systemic risk is now widely accepted as the fundamental underlying concept for the design of the post-crisis regulatory agenda. Effective mitigation requires...

This study uses a computable general equilibrium model to analyze various policy scenarios for a carbon tax on greenhouse gas emissions from petroleum fuels and kerosene in Ethiopia. The carbon tax starts at $5 per ton of carbon dioxide in 2018 and rises to $30 per ton in 2030. Different...

Using a new, large data set on quarterly reserve requirements for the period 1970-2011, this paper provides new evidence on the use of reserve requirements as a countercyclical macroprudential tool in developing countries. The appeal of reserve requirements lies in the pro-cyclical behavior of...

This paper investigates corruption and tax evasion and their firm-level determinants across 25,000 firms in 57 countries, a large fraction of which are small and medium enterprises in developing countries. Firms that pay more bribes also evade more taxes. Corruption acts as a tax on innovation,...

This paper provides evidence from eight developing countries of an inverse relationship between poverty and city size. Poverty is both more widespread and deeper in very small and small towns than in large or very large cities. This basic pattern is generally robust to choice of poverty line....

This paper discusses possible macroeconomic implications for low-income countries of increased revenue inflows that may follow from implementing certain global greenhouse gas mitigation policies. Such revenue sources include revenue from emissions offset mechanisms, direct investments, and...

Empirical evidence - including the current global crisis - suggests that shocks from advanced countries often have a disproportionate effect on developing economies. Can this account for the fact that aggregate fluctuations are larger and more persistent in the latter than in the former...

Macro- and micro-economic evidence suggests a positive role of remittances in preparing households against natural disasters and in coping with the loss afterwards. Analysis of cross-country macroeconomic data shows that remittances increase in the aftermath of natural disasters in countries...