Industry mean wages in China have exhibited sharply increased dispersion since the early 1990s. The upward trend in differences of average wages among major industry groups parallels increases in wage and income inequality not only between rural and urban sectors but within the urban economy as...

Recent research conclude that the GCC economies have failed to address the oil curse. They are far behind other countries, especially those in the G7, which possess huge reserves of oil wealth but have undertaken economic diversification to correct the ill-effects of an oil curse. This paper...

The influence of industrial structure, more specifically of business ownership, is investigated on the level of unemployment in Japan. The question is to what extent business ownership, i.e., entrepreneurship, can reduce the level of unemployment. It will be concluded that Japan is hardly an...

Successful reductions in poverty, resulting from substantial increases in income and structural transformation, have been associated with growing levels of income inequality. This paper explores the link between structural transformation and inequality in Indonesia by applying Theil’s L...

Using aggregate balance sheet data from banks across the EU-25 over the period from 1997 to 2005 this paper provides empirical evidence that national banking market concentration has a negative impact on European banks’ financial soundness as measured by the Z-score technique while controlling...

This paper studies factors associated with firm participation in export markets, focusing primarily on firm size and access to credit, based on a survey sample comprising observations of 8,080 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) (with fewer than 100 employees) and non-SME firms in developing...

This study examines the relationship between firm characteristics and borrowing from commercial banks by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and five Southeast Asian economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam). Analysis...

We use detailed micro data to document a causal response of local retail price to changes in house prices, with elasticities of 15%-20% across housing booms and busts. Notably, these price responses are largest in zip codes with many homeowners, and non-existent in zip codes with mostly renters....

We examine whether capital flows more to high Tobin's q industries and find that it flows more to high q industries from 1971 until 1996 but not from 1997 to 2014. This change is due to a decrease in the q-sensitivity of equity funding resulting mostly from the increased q-sensitivity of...

The firms listed on the stock market in aggregate contribute less to total non-farm employment and GDP now than in the 1970s. A major reason for this development is the decline of manufacturing and the growth of the service economy as firms providing services are less likely to be listed on...