This paper introduces a comprehensive database of informal economic activity. The database focuses on measures that have strong cross-country and over time coverage: it includes both model-based and survey-based measures of informality and covers more than 160 economies for the period 1990-2018....

We study the degree of synchronization between formal- and informal-economy business cycles. Using a comprehensive database of informal activity that covers a wide range of informality measures from almost 160 countries over the 1990-2018 period, we report two major results. First, fluctuations...

In the past four to five decades, inflation has fallen around the world, with median annual global consumer price inflation down from a peak of 16.6 percent in 1974 to 2.6 percent in 2017. This decline began in advanced economies in the mid-1980s and in emerging market and developing economies...