This paper presents findings from two rounds (2020 and 2021) of a study on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on informal workers in 11 cities across five regions of the world (Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and North America). The study, carried out by the WIEGO network in...

In this paper, I quantify the role of media in the formation of support for unemployment insurance. Theory suggests that individuals who feel threatened by globalization demand compensatory policies. Using a novel method of quantitative text analysis, I derive measures on the stance to...

We consider the interplay of climate change impacts, global mitigation policies, and the interests of developing countries to 2050. Focusing on Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, we employ a structural approach to biophysical and economic modeling that incorporates climate uncertainty and allows...

International corporate tax is an important source of government revenue, especially in lower-income countries. An important recent study of the scale of this problem was carried out by International Monetary Fund researchers Ernesto Crivelli, Ruud De Mooij, and Michael Keen. We first...

In this paper we use the new Government Revenue Dataset to analyse fiscal decentralization. We find that developed countries are on average more decentralized than developing countries and that Asia, Europe and North America are among the most fiscally decentralized regions. In our econometric...

This paper investigates gender inequality in vulnerable employment: forms of employment typically featuring high precariousness, inadequate earnings, and lack of decent working conditions. Using a large collection of harmonized household surveys from developing countries, we measure long-term...

This paper discusses the emergence of two new middles since the Cold War, namely middle-income countries and people living above absolute poverty but below a security-from poverty-line. The paper sets out what has happened. It is argued that although there has been substantial economic growth,...

This paper presents a review of recent studies that estimate the trade effects of foreign aid. It also provides new results obtained using panel data techniques to estimate the direct effects of aid on international trade, accounting for countries' participation in free trade agreements, and the...

The total funding envelope for World Bank projects is often divided among various state and non-state actors, each of which can have competing ideas about or interests in the project. How does the division of financing relate to overall project effectiveness? I argue that too many funding...

Countries face both challenges and opportunities in using their extractive industries to achieve more inclusive development - particularly in the developing world. Yet while a large national income can result from resource wealth, it can also be associated with acute social inequality and deep...