This paper advances two hypotheses. First, the extent of an environmentally degrading economic activity is a function of the balance of power between the winners, who derive net benefits from the activity, and the losers, who bear net costs. Second, greater inequalities of power and wealth lead,...

Wall Street hyper-speculation brought the global economy to its knees in 2008-09.  To prevent a 1930s-level Depression at that time, economic policymakers throughout the world enacted extraordinary measures.  These included large-scale fiscal stimulus programs, financed by major expansions in...

The authors demonstrate that the average state or local government worker earns higher wages than the average private-sector worker—but only because they are, on average, older and substantially better educated. More than half of state and local government employees in New England have a...

The factors that allow the launch of a speculative attack, such as those on he government debts of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy in 2010, are always multiple. In this case, they can be found in some simultaneous events (e.g. the regional German elections of the 9th of May), in some...

This background paper for the World Bank’s World Development Report 2011 discusses current financing arrangements for postconflict countries and fragile states, with a focus on official development assistance. In recent years a consensus has emerged that in these “difficult environments”...

In August 2009 the African finance ministers issued the Freetown Declaration, in which they committed their governments to “implement fiscal stimulus measures” to counter the effects of the international financial crisis on their economies.  This paper analyzes the feasibility of realizing...

Current federal policies to ‘make work pay’ leave the vast majority―88%―of low-income working families in the U.S. without the guarantee of a decent living standard, even with full-time work. In their new study, Jeannette Wicks-Lim and Jeffrey Thompson advance proposals to substantially...