Using individual-level data for 35 countries, the authors investigate the microeconomic determinants of attitudes toward corruption. They find women, employed, less wealthy, and older individuals to be more averse to corruption. The authors also provide evidence that social effects play an...

Faced with COVID-19 (Coronavirus), countries are taking drastic action based on little information. Two tests can help governments shorten and soften economically costly suppression measures while still containing the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The first—a PCR assay—identifies...

This paper exploits a unique longitudinal data set from Tanzania to examine the consequences of child labor on education, employment choices, and marital status over a 10-year horizon. Shocks to crop production and rainfall are used as instrumental variables for child labor. For boys, the...

The authors use firm-level, cross-county data from Investment Climate surveys in 49 developing countries to investigate an important channel through which informality can affect productivity: access to credit and external finance. Informality is measured as self-reported lack of tax compliance...

Although it is widely accepted that financial development is associated with higher growth, the evidence on the channels through which credit affects growth on the micro-level is scant. Using data from a cross section of Bulgarian firms, the authors estimate the impact of access to credit (as...

Using individual-level data for 35 countries, Gatti, Paternostro, and Rigolini investigate the microeconomic determinants of attitudes toward corruption. They find women, employed, less wealthy, and older individuals to be more averse to corruption. The authors also provide evidence that social...

Although a growing theoretical literature points to credit constraints as an important source of inefficiently high child labor, little work has been done to assess its empirical relevance. Using panel data from Tanzania, Beegle, Dehejia, and Gatti find that households respond to transitory...

In the absence of developed financial markets, households appear to resort to child labor to cope with income variability. This evidence suggests that policies aimed at increasing households' access to credit could be effective in reducing child labor. Even though access to credit is central to...

In the presence of imperfect information and uncertainty, altruistic parents might use intergenerational transfers strategically to elicit effort from their children. As a result, gifts and bequests are less reactive to the income realizations of the children than the standard altruistic model...

Empirical estimates suggest that fiscal decentralization in government spending is associated with lower government corruption.The relationship between decentralization of government activities and the extent of rent extraction by private parties is an important element in the recent debate on...