Using over one million observations, from 6 Transition countries and 14 "old" European countries, we show that, in stable EU economies, other people's income affects my utility directly, through comparison effects, whereas in more volatile Transition economies it affects me indirectly, in a...

Recent data advances have opened exciting new avenues for analyzing the political economy of foreign aid. Recent papers have looked at the social, environmental or welfare implications of aid. This paper, however, combines geo-referenced data on foreign aid with a similarly coded dataset of FDI...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the notion of economic informality and its application in the rural context of developing and transitional economies, applying Keith Hart's (1987) notion of informality as a 'remedial concept'. Some remedy is needed to make sense of the many 'palpable...

We develop a growth model that features the endogenous two-tier innovations of information carrier technology and production technology. Information carrier technology promotes production technology innovation and thus economic growth through improving the preservation and dissemination of...

We build a novel endogenous growth model with information carrier technology, in which knowledge may be lost in storage and dissemination. In the asymptotic balanced growth path equilibrium, we establish two main findings. First, the growth rate of information carrier technology and the...

This paper assesses the optimal setting of fiscal spending and foreign exchange rate intervention policies in response to volatile foreign aid, in a small open economy model that incorporates typical features of low-income countries. Within a class of policy rules, it jointly considers the...

Empirical studies have shown that preferences for redistribution are significantly correlated with expectations of future mobility and the belief that society offers equal opportunities. We add to previous research by investigating the role of individual and social norms on rent seeking. We find...

Altruism, giving and pro-social conduct, and reciprocity, are the basis of the existence and performance of societies, through their various occurrences: in families; among the diverse motives of the political and public sector; as the general respect and moral conduct which permit life in...

Using new cross-country survey and experimental data, we investigate if it is possible to increase people's support for the national government to address inequality through redistribution by providing them with information about inequality and social mobility in their country. We test this by...

This paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of search risk in the housing market. To do so, I introduce a tractable directed search model of housing with multidimensional buyer and seller heterogeneity. I incorporate this framework in an incomplete markets macroeconomic model with...