This paper discusses the determinants of and the barriers to formal saving both from the theoretical point of view and based on empirical evidence from various associated interventions and their possible effects at the micro and macroeconomic levels. It presents a comprehensive review of the...

The benefits of implementing Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts (UISAs) are studied in the presence of the multiple sources of information frictions often existing in developing countries. A benchmark incomplete markets economy is calibrated to Mexico in the early 2000s. The unconstrained...

The Grand Transition (GT) view claims that economic development is causal to institutional development, and that many institutional changes can be understood as transitions occurring at roughly the same level (zones) of development. The Primacy of Institutions (PoI) view claims that economic...

This is an update and revision of our 2009 study. Using a broad dataset and an original methodology, this paper reports composite development gaps across economic, social and institutional sectors. We define development gap as the distance between the observed and the expected development level...

This article makes three contributions to the literature. First, it provides new evidence of the impact of community monitoring interventions using a unique dataset from the Citizen Visible Audit (CVA) program in Colombia. In particular, this article studies the effect of social audits on...