Analysing a large sample of 1980 - 2004 unbalanced panel data, the current study presents comparative global evidence on the role of (income) inequality in poverty reduction. The evidence involves both an indirect channel via the tendency of high inequality to decrease the rate at which income...

Methane is the second-most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas. Ruminant livestock are a major source of emissions. The expansion of pasture is one of the main drivers of deforestation, one of the larger sources of carbon dioxide emissions. An understanding of dietary choice is needed for...

Money manager capitalism - characterized by highly leveraged funds seeking maximum returns in an environment that systematically underprices risk - has resulted in a series of boom-and-bust cycles in equities, real estate, and commodities. Because subsequent cycles have been increasingly...

In this brief, Biagio Bossone of the International Monetary Fund evaluates narrow banking from the perspective of modern theories of financial intermediation. These theories portray the status quo banking system as a solution to otherwise intractable problems of imperfect information, risk, and...

According to Research Associate Thomas I. Palley, global outsourcing represents a new economic challenge that calls for a new set of institutions. In this brief, he expands upon the problems of offshore outsourcing as outlined in Public Policy Brief no. 86 and focuses on the microeconomic...

Even as the United States enjoys an economic expansion, there is an undercurrent of concern among economic analysts who follow financial markets. Some feel that the expansion of the credit derivatives markets poses the threat of a crisis similar to the Long-Term Capital Management debacle of...

In this paper, we provide evidence that expanding firms tend to serve new markets which are geographically close and culturally related to their prior export destinations. We quantify the impact of this spatial pattern using a Chinese firm-level data set. To ensure an exogenous set of potential...

Gravity models of international trade have been frequently applied to estimate the impact of common (official or spoken) language on bilateral trade. This study provides a meta-analysis based on 701 language effects collected from 81 academic articles. On average, a common (official or spoken)...