This paper proposes an overlapping generations multi‐sector model of the labor market for developing countries with three heterogeneities – heterogeneity within self‐employment, heterogeneity in ability, and heterogeneity in age. We revisit an iconic paradox in a class of multi‐sector...

How does employer power mediate the impact of labor saving technical change on inequality? This question has largely been neglected in the recent literature on the wage and distributional consequences of automation, where the labor market is assumed to be competitive. In a simple task-based...

Are political activists preferentially targeted by politicians engaging in clientelistic transfers to bolster political support? We provide the first model to highlight two possible rationales for such transfers: to mobilize support from the activists themselves, or to mobilize support from...

We present a model which considers both regulatory burden of offshoring barriers and possible terms of trade gains from such barriers. Non-tariff barriers are shown to be unambiguously welfare-reducing, and tariff barriers raise welfare only when associated terms-of-trade gains exceed resulting...

We present a model of offshoring of tasks to a developing nation, which is characterized by a minimum wage formal sector and a flexible wage informal sector. Some offshored tasks are outsourced by the formal sector to the lower wage informal sector. An improvement in the productivity in...

In many countries, non-compliance with minimum wage legislation is widespread, and authorities may be seen as having turned a blind eye to a legislation that they have themselves passed. But if enforcement is imperfect, how effective can a minimum wage be? And if non-compliance is widespread,...

For decades, rapid urban expansion has led to concerns over the loss of cultivated land in rural China. This contrasts sharply with another salient feature of the Chinese land policy reform landscape that has gone on largely unnoticed - the addition of newly cultivated land in China through land...

Appropriate assessment of the social value of market access is at the core of a broad range of inquiries in trade research. A selection include: the appraisal of industry-level production and consumption distortions due to selective trade liberalization and partial tax reform; the construction...