Amongst the hallmarks of a civilized society are that both the rich and the poor experience increasing longevity, and that both groups are entitled to leisure at the end of their working lives. Yet, as the economic crises of 2008-2009 reduces the value of assets in pension funds an emerging...

This article sheds light on a crucial aspect of the global crisis of 2007-2009: the steady increase of US consumer debt to precipitous levels over a quarter of century. That trend, fed by a combination of macro-economic, demographic, and political factors, intensified greatly in the 2000s when a...

We partition post-Soviet Union Transition Economies into two groups: European Union New Member States and countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States or the South Eastern Europe area. Both groups started the 1980s with low levels of inequality, but in the early 2000s the latter...

In an analysis of US wages and salaries by sex, age and educational attainment between 1969 and 2008, we find that median wages and salaries of males with no more than a high school diploma have fallen over more than four decades for all but the oldest age group, which made only marginal gains....

The rise in inequality in the last two decades has affected most developed economies. The systemic nature of this inequality is the focus of this paper. A combination of product market internationalization, financial globalization and technological changes favoring large organizations created...

Many African economies have experienced rather dismal industrial development since the 1980s. The consensus is that African firms lack competitiveness in a world with increasing trade openness. What determines competitiveness? A well-known explanation is that resource endowments in Africa favour...

Countries subject to the same degree of exposure to globalization may experience very different levels of economic insecurity depending on social support or employment protections provided by the state or even due to insurance obtained by households. We identify five varieties of industrialized...

The paper aims to provide an original contribution to evaluating several kinds of relations between four areas of innovation activities - training, technology, organization, ICT (information and communication technologies) - and industrial relations and firm's economic performance. Quantitative...

Latin America has one of the highest interest margins in the world; furthermore, credit to private sector and bank spread are negatively correlated. Brazil, in particular, has one the highest bank spreads in the world - it is even so far the highest one among the Latin American economies. Indeed,...

The adjusted net saving rate, initially known as the genuine saving rate, was first published by the World Bank in the late 1990s as a more comprehensive measure of national saving and one more indicative of sustainable development. The adjusted net saving rate incorporated not just physical...