This paper studies the macroeconomic effects and sequencing of (LMRs) and product (PMRs) market reforms in Morocco. It finds that introducing LMRs and PMRs simultaneously would add about 2.5 percentage points (pp) of GDP growth and reduce unemployment by about 2.2 pp after five years. If...

I derive a rule for the allocation of non-leisure time which can account for variations in labor time between the market and the non-market sectors and can accord well with Okun's law. Applying this rule empirically to the informal economy confirms, contrary to previous findings, that corporate...

It is well known that, in continuous time, the Cobb-Douglas function can be derived from the underlying, data governing, accounting identity under some reasonable assumptions (factor shares are constant, and the weighted growth of the labour input price and the capital input price is constant)....

I estimate the elasticity of GDP with respect to aggregate capital and labor using industry-specific cost structures and without assuming an aggregate production function exists. Different assumptions about industry capital costs provide upper and lower bounds for the elasticities. In the U.S....

Anthropogenic production and operating activities give off heat and emit thermal infrared radiation (TIR) as a fundamental result of the laws of thermodynamics. This study examines whether the strength of TIR measures the dynamics of economic activities and development. Using satellite data on...

Informal firms play a crucial role in both developing and developed countries, and there is evidence of a larger presence of moonlighting firms over ghost firms. The former are firms that operate simultaneously in the official and unofficial sectors, whereas the ghost firms undertake their...

The paper studies the revenue, efficiency, and distributional implications of a simple strategy of offsetting tariff reductions with increases in destination-based consumption taxes so as to leave consumer prices unchanged. We employ a dynamic micro-founded macroeconomic model of a small open...

This paper studies the interactions between the structure of product demand, relative wages, and the allocation of economic activity across two sectors. The agrarian sector produces a homogeneous good and consists of informal firms employing adults and children. The modern sector produces a...

We consider a dual labor market with a frictional formal sector and a competitive informal sector. We show that the size of the informal sector is generally too large compared to the optimal allocation of the workers. It follows that our results give a rationale to informality-reducing policies.

In many economies, there is substantial economic activity in the informal sector, beyond the reach of government policy. Labor market policies, which by definition apply only to the formal sector, can have important spillover effects on the informal sector. The relative sizes of the informal and...