For at least 30 years, the union movement at a worldwide level has been generally downward. That trend has accelerated during the Great Recession. During that same period, economic inequality has grown significantly. The question this paper raises is whether the union movement can be proactively...

Licensed workers could be shielded from unemployment during recession since occupational licensing laws are asymmetric--making unlicensed workers an illegal substitute for licensed workers but not the reverse. We test our hypothesis using a difference-in-differences event study research design...

Fluctuations in banks' due diligence are increasingly viewed as a force driving the buildup and unfolding of crises. In a dynamic general equilibrium model, we show that banksí access to retail and wholesale liquidity and the values of loan portfolios govern banks' incentives and effectiveness...

Many countries, especially developing ones, follow procyclical fiscal polices, namely spending goes up (taxes go down) in booms and spending goes down (taxes go up) in recessions. We provide an explanation for this suboptimal fiscal policy based upon political distortions and incentives for...

The present paper analyzes the cyclicality of public spending on key social, economic and military sectors, including agriculture, education, health, social protection, transportation and military spending using data available for up to 40 developing countries spanning the period from 1980 to...