The Long-Term Growth Model (LTGM) and its extensions are a suite of models and spreadsheet-based toolkits for analyzing future growth paths in developing countries, based on the Solow-Swan growth model. This volume, The Long-Term Growth Model: Fundamentals, Extensions, and Applications, is a...

"Informality" is a term used to describe the collection of firms, workers, and activities that operate outside the legal and regulatory systems. It is widespread in the majority of developing countries-in a typical developing economy, the informal sector produces about 35 percent of gross...

In the past three decades, emerging countries have gone through extensive decentralization reforms. Yet, there are no studies assessing quantitatively the relative importance of various factors known to affect the success of decentralization. This paper builds on a comprehensive dataset the...

The authors examine empirically how domestic structural characteristics related to openness and product- and factor-market flexibility influence the impact that terms-of-trade shocks can have on aggregate output. For this purpose, they apply an econometric methodology based on semi-structural...

This paper studies the trends and cycles of informal employment. It first presents a theoretical model where the size of informal employment is determined by the relative costs and benefits of informality and the distribution of workers' skills. In the long run, informal employment varies with...

This paper contributes to explain the cross-country heterogeneity of the poverty response to changes in economic growth. It does so by focusing on the structure of output growth. The paper presents a two-sector theoretical model that clarifies the mechanism through which the sectoral composition...

The authors study the effects of regulation on economic growth and the relative size of the informal sector in a large sample of industrial and developing countries. Along with firm dynamics, informality is an important channel through which regulation affects macroeconomic performance and...

COVID-19 not only represents a worldwide public health emergency but has become an international economic crisis that could surpass the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Right now, containment and mitigation measures are necessary to limit the spread of the virus and save lives. However, they...