On November 08, 2016, India took a decisive step towards going “cashless” by suddenly announcing withdrawal of its existing currency notes of two highest denominations, namely, the Rs. 500/= and the Rs. 1000/=. The move, announced with a suddenness that took the entire nation by surprise,...

Employing a unique dataset that covers households from six West African capitals, this paper provides new evidence on the demand for informal sector products and services. We first investigate whether demand linkages exist between formal and informal products and distribution channels, and...

This paper studies the impact of informality on the long-run relationship between inflation and unemployment in developing economies. I present a dynamic general equilibrium model with informality in both labor and goods markets and where money and credit coexist. An increase in inflation...

This paper investigates the impact of medical screening on individual disability insurance benefit receipt. Using a unique policy change in Switzerland, I assess the size of award errors in disability insurance and show that improvements in medical screening can substantially reduce insurance...

From 2014 onwards, Europe has witnessed an unprecedented influx of refugees. We conducted a survey experiment with almost 5,000 university students in Germany in which we randomly shifted the perception of refugees’ education level through information provision. We find that the perceived...

This paper analyses the effects of EU regional policy transfer payments on net migration flows among the EU-28 countries. The hypothesis is tested that EU transfer payments do hamper internal migration across the EU. On the one hand, this is done by reestimating the results found by Egger,...

Old age poverty is to become one of the most pressing issues in the coming decades given the demo-graphic trends forecasted. This paper investigates the main instrument to fight old age poverty: Social, non-contributory pension systems. A new comprehensive data set on 172 countries over the...