How do minimum wages affect earnings inequality in countries with large informal sectors? I provide reduced-form evidence that the 2000s minimum wage hike in Brazil raised overall inequality by increasing inequality inside the informal sector. I develop a model where heterogeneous firms select...

The paper considers several determinants of the size of the informal sector and explores the implications of corruption. It focuses attention on an issue that has not received much attention before, namely, the link between informality and corruption. We show that corruption affects both the...

We consider two vertical links between informal- and formal-sector firms and study their implications. In one case, the final products produced by the formal- and informal-sector firms are vertically differentiated in terms of quality, and the size of the informal sector demand is related to the...

This paper studies fiscal policy design in an economy in which (i) the representative household has recursive preferences, and (ii) growth is endogenously sustained through innovations whose market value depends on the tax system. By reallocating tax distortions through debt, fiscal policy...

Business owners of privately held firms have multiple opportunities to decide how much taxable income to take out from their firm and how much to retain within the firm. However, undistributed profits within firms, i.e. retained earnings, are typically invisible in income data, distorting our...

Cross-sectional earnings inequality has risen sharply since the late 1970s in the United States. It remains an open question how this development has affected the insurance and income redistribution roles played by Social Security. The paper's first question is: How have the government...