Despite rapid economic growth in recent decades, informality remains a persistent phenomenon in the labour markets of many low- and middle-income countries. A key issue in this regard concerns the extent to which informality itself is a persistent state. Using panel data from Ghana, South...

States' fiscal capacity plays a pivotal role in developing economies, but it is less clear what its determinants are or what explains cross-country differences. We focus on the impact of natural resources. Standard arguments suggest that natural resources rents may reduce incentives to invest in...

What motivates individuals to become politicians? This is an important question in decentralized democracies, where local politicians play a key role in public goods provision. However, and in emerging economies, bureaucratic hurdles and administrative failures introduce uncertainty about the...

This paper discusses the 'developer's dilemma' - a tension emerging from the fact that developing countries are simultaneously seeking structural transformation and broad-based growth to raise incomes of the poor. Simon Kuznets originally hypothesized that structural transformation may have a...

Administrative failures in anti-poverty programmes are widespread in developing countries. We focus on one such administrative failure - the persistent delay in paying beneficiaries on time in India's iconic anti-poverty programme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). Using a...

In many low-income transition countries, where formal institutions such as courts do not function effectively, informal institutions are often used by firms to minimize transaction risks. We examine the role of informal institutions, in the forms of relational contracting and social networks, in...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented global crisis. The task for economic policy is to help keep people alive, enterprises afloat, and households out of poverty. The pandemic has macroeconomic dimensions. First, it affects macroeconomic stability and growth. Second, the tools of...

Whether cash transfers have unintended behavioural effects on the recipient household's labour supply is of considerable policy interest. We examine the 'intent to treat effect' of the Indira Gandhi National Old-Age Pension Scheme on prime-age women's labour supply decisions in India, where...

The Indian labour market is characterized by a high level of informality, with large numbers of workers in poorly paid 'lower-tier' informal jobs, and somewhat better paid 'uppertier' informal jobs, which do not have the same benefits and security of tenure as formal jobs. We examine the...

We examine the intergenerational mobility of women relative to men, using paired mother-daughter and father-son data on occupation and education for Cameroon. We find that both in occupation and education, intergenerational mobility is higher for sons than for daughters. The intergenerational...