This paper explores the qualitative and quantitative implications of optimal taxation in a developing economy when economic growth is endogenously determined. We differentiate this class of economies from a developed economy in two aspects: informal sector is quantitatively significant and...

The rapidly growing national debt in the U.S. since the 1970s has alarmed and intrigued the academic world. Consequently, the concept of dynamic (in)efficiency in an overlapping generations (OLG) world and the importance of the heterogeneous-agents and incomplete markets (HAIM) hypothesis to...

This paper studies the first large scale effort by the Brazilian government to increase the social security compliance of self-employed workers using behavioral interventions. In 2014, the Brazilian Ministry of Social Security gradually delivered by postal mail a booklet reminding nearly 3...

This paper compares the saving behavior of formal and informal workers and additionally provides a socioeconomic and financial characterization of informal workers in Chile. The paper uses the Financial Household Survey conducted by the Central Bank of Chile in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, which...

Evasion of labor market regulations in middle income countries is systemic. This is generally known as informality. In Latin America, where less than 50% of workers are registered with social security, this is a permanent phenomenon and encompasses a variety of economic realities ranging from...

Latin American governments swiftly implemented income assistance programs to sustain families' livelihoods during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. This paper analyzes the potential coverage and generosity of these measures and assesses the suitability of current safety nets to deal with unexpected...

We build an equilibrium model of a small open economy with labor market frictions and imperfectly enforced regulations. Heterogeneous firms sort into the formal or informal sector. We estimate the model using data from Brazil, and use counterfactual simulations to understand how trade affects...

In the current age of trade and financial openness, local economies in developing countries are becoming increasingly exposed to external investments. The objective of the proposed two-sector model with environmental externalities is to provide an insight into the interaction between external...

Infl ows of foreign knowledge are the key for developing countries to catch up with the world technology frontier. In this paper, I construct a simple tractable model to analyze (a) the incentives of foreign fi rms to bring their know-how to a developing country and (b) the incentives of...

This paper presents a fairly general treatment of recursive infinite horizon forward looking optimizing systems on infinite dimensional spatial domains. It includes optimal control, an analysis of local stability of spatially flat optimal steady states and development of techniques to compute...