Much of the vast literature on changes in income distribution in advanced countries during the last two decades attributes these either to globalization, or to skill-biased technology, or to a combination of the two. A transatlantic concensus has emerged to suggest that thes two factors have led...

As seen from the year 2001, economic policy in developing and post-socialist economies during the preceding 10-15 years had one dominating theme - external "liberalization" or the drastic lowering or removal of long-standing barriers to almost all international transactions in markets for goods...

In this study, we analyse the impact of the creation of a customs union among UEMOA (Western African Economic and Monetary Union)countries, with a special emphasis on the labour market structure. The implementation of the customs union reform will translate in most of these countries, into a...

The Todaro Paradox states that policies aimed at reducing urban unemployment are bound to backfire: they will raise rather than reduce urban unemployment. The aim of this paper is to re-examine this paradox in the context of efficiency wage and search-matching models. For that, we study a policy...

Estimates of the effect of education on GDP (the social return to education) have been hard to reconcile with micro-evidence on the private return. We present a simple explanation that combines two ideas: imperfect substitution between worker types and endogenous skill-biased technological...

We develop a theory of political transitions inspired in part by the experiences of Western Europe and Latin America. Nondemocratic societies are controlled by a rich elite. The initially disenfranchised poor can contest power by threatening social unrest or revolution, and this may force the...

Policy-makers in European countries typically complain about the low level of labour mobility within Europe. At the same time they appear to be increasingly concerned about growing migration pressures from outside the European Community. In this paper, we try to cast some light on the issues of...

Social contacts help workers to find jobs, but those jobs need not be in the occupations where workers are most productive. Hence social contacts can generate mismatch between a worker’s occupational choice and their comparative productive advantage. Thus economies with dense social networks...

In the past century, more people have perished from famine than from the two World Wars combined. Many more were exposed to famine and survived. Yet we know almost nothing about the long run impact of famine on these survivors. This paper addresses this question by estimating the effect of...

This Paper investigates the impact of the heterogeneity of the labour force on the spatial distribution of activities. This goal is achieved by applying the tools of discrete choice theory to an economic geography model. We show that taste heterogeneity acts as a strong dispersion force. We also...