The role of inherited wealth in modern economies has increasingly become under scrutiny. This study presents one of the first attempts to shed light on how demographic aging could shape this role. We show that, in the absence of retirement annuities, or for a given level of annuitization, both...

This paper analyzes the impact of demographic aging on capital accumulation and welfare in economies with unfunded pensions. Using a two-period overlapping generation model with potentially endogenous retirement decisions, it shows that both the type of aging, i.e. declining fertility or...

The last decade has witnessed an increasing global awareness of human impact on the planet's climate and its likely consequences. However, strategic and structural complexities hinder further compliance and participation in efforts to establish a global agreement for climate change mitigation....

Aging may be one of the most far-reaching processes defining the economic, fiscal, and social changes societies are likely to experience over the next 40 years. The demographic consequences of aging will have a dramatic impact on labor markets, economic growth, social structures--and government...

Punjab is Pakistan's most populous and economically vibrant province. Its fiscal health, therefore, is crucial to the fiscal stability and economic development of Pakistan as a whole. By end-June 2011, Punjab's outstanding debt stood at Rs. 413 billion, or 4.0 percent of Gross Subnational...

In this paper we show that the Dutch disease can arise solely from inequality in the distribution of natural resource rents. Given two otherwise identical countries that differ only in the ownership shares of the natural resource rents, the country with the less equal distribution will have less...

This paper investigates how the devolution of oil windfalls affects the likelihood of political violence. It shows that transferring large shares of oil wealth can prevent conflict, while transferring small shares can trigger it. Among the different transfer schemes, fiscal transfers (to...

This paper develops a multi-sector, small open economy Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model, which includes the accumulation of human capital, built via public expenditures in education and health. Four possible fiscal rules are examined for total public investment in infrastructure,...

In 1991, thousands of South Sudanese boys walked into Kenya. Having fled war in their own countries, about 20 thousand of these "lost boys" first tried taking refuge in Ethiopia. With no real options to stay, many were killed on their walk back to South Sudan or while attempting to swim the...

This report comes at a crucial time when the unprecedented global refugee crisis, most notably in Europe and the Mediterranean, has not only focused the world's attention on the plight of refugees, but has also led to the politicization of refugee influxes. With an average of 24 people worldwide...