This paper investigates empirically the fiscal and welfare trade-offs involved in designing a pension system when workers can avoid participation by working informally. A dynamic behavioral model captures a household's labor supply, formal/informal sector choice and saving decisions under the...

We follow Woo (2011) in using the Catch-Up Index (CUI) to define the middle-income trap and identify the countries caught in it. The CUI shows that China became a middle-income country in 2007-2008. We see five major types of middle-income trap that China is vulnerable to (a) fiscal stress from...

During the '90s most Latin American countries were submitted to neoliberal structural reform policies. Neoliberal policies imposed market supremacy, reduced the State's role in the economy and deregulated the markets. This paper aims at describing how these policies affected the most important...

The most common forms of government-mandated job displacement insurance are Severance Pay (SP; lump-sum payments at layoff) and Unemployment Insurance (UI; periodic payments contingent on non-employment). While there is a vast literature on UI, SP programs have received much less attention, even...

I develop a dynamic model of forward-looking entrepreneurs, who decide whether to operate in the formal economy or informal economy and choose how much to invest in their businesses, taking government policy as given. The government has access to two policy tools: taxes on formal business...

This paper investigates empirically the fiscal and welfare trade-offs involved in designing a pension system when workers can avoid participation by working informally. A dynamic behavioral model captures a household's labor supply, formal/informal sector choice and saving decisions under the...

This paper investigates empirically the fiscal and welfare trade-offs involved in designing a pension system when workers can avoid participation by working informally. A dynamic behavioral model captures a household's labor supply, formal/informal sector choice and saving decisions under the...

This paper is an empirical study of the risk-return trade-off faced by entrepreneurs. It calls into question a longstanding empirical puzzle: that most entrepreneurs preserve despite persistently low earnings and earnings growth. I find that entrepreneurial earnings are severely mismeasured and...

The informal sector is an extensive phenomenon in developing countries. While some of its implications have drawn considerable attention in the literature, one relatively unexplored aspect has to do with the saving patterns of workers and firms and how these might influence aggregate savings and...

This paper explores the role of social vouchers as a tool for social inclusion and local development. It presents a typology of vouchers and their objectives, governing institutional and regulatory frameworks, use by national and local governments, and the social economy (Section1). It analyses...