Using a new data set of 207 national elections across 50 democracies, this paper is the first to systematically examine the effects of oil price shocks on incumbents’ political fortunes in developed oil-importing countries. We find that oil price increases systematically lower the odds of...

This paper examines the impacts of U.S.-China trade tensions via the lens of East Asian stock markets. Studying 10 indices of the main East Asian stock markets, it finds that announcements of "trade war" escalation translated into 50 to 60 percent of the total declines in two major Chinese stock...

This paper documents the existence of a "middle-income trap" for the Middle East and North Africa region. It argues that the economic woes of the Middle East and North Africa offer new insights into the debate on the trap which has thus far focused on the East Asia and Pacific region. The...

This paper examines the labor market impacts of a large-scale marine environmental crisis caused by toxic chemical contamination in Vietnam's central coast in 2016. Combining labor force surveys with satellite data on fishing-boat detection, the analysis finds negative and heterogeneous impacts...

This paper examines the pros and cons of gradual versus big-bang approaches toward devaluations. It presents original empirical evidence regarding output, consumption, investment and trade balances associated with gradual and big-bang devaluation episodes. It finds that big-bang devaluations are...

Over the past decades, East Asia and Pacific's productivity has been gradually catching up with the frontier (the United States), with China leading the pack. Productivity growth has been driven by sustained within-sector productivity growth. Reallocation of labor to sectors with higher...

This paper studies the effects of a reform in Serbia that transferred business registration from regional courts to a centralized agency. Using administrative data, the analysis employs a difference-in-difference strategy that compares new firms before and after the reform across districts based...

Very few studies currently exist on the long-term impacts of schooling policies in developing countries. This paper examines the impacts -- half a century later -- of a mass education program conducted by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the occupied areas during the First Indochina War....

This paper establishes a simple theory-based real exchange rate (RER) Misalignment Index for countries around the world from 1950-2014, and shows that South Africa’s RER has been undervalued over the last decade. For the most recent year of 2014, depending on the proxy for productivity, it is...

Using a panel of 80 developing and developed countries for the period 1990-2015, this studyanalyses the relationship between exchange rate volatility and foreign direct investment (FDI)inflows. The results reveal a negative relationship between de facto exchange rate volatility andFDI. Reducing...