This paper develops a model where a benevolent constitutional planner has the ability to restrict the allocation space of citizens who are heterogeneous in productivity prior to the stochastic determination of a government responsible for structuring the tax system. It finds that limits on...

Can variations in immunization rates be accounted for by differences in information and commitment technologies? I document four salient facts regarding DPT vaccination rates: (i) lower immunization in countries with greater costs of contract enforcement, (ii) higher volatility in immunization...

What were the distributional consequences of the recent demonetization in India? Can the implementation of demonetization be improved to mitigate its distributional impact? This paper answers these questions using a dynamic contracting model featuring costly state verification and...

We propose a new channel for the transmission of monetary policy shocks, the coordination channel. We develop a New Keynesian model in which bank lending is strategically complementary. Banks do not observe the distribution of loans but infer it using Gaussian signals. Under this paradigm,...

We propose a new channel for the transmission of monetary policy shocks, the coordination channel. We develop a New Keynesian model in which bank lending is strategically complementary. Banks do not observe the distribution of loans but infer it using Gaussian signals. Under this paradigm,...

Do changes in monetary policy affect inflation and output in the East African Community (EAC)? We find that (i) Monetary Transmission Mechanism (MTM) tends to be generally weak when using standard statistical inferences, but somewhat strong when using non-standard inference methods; (ii) when...

Do changes in monetary policy affect inflation and output in the East African Community (EAC)? We find that (i) Monetary Transmission Mechanism (MTM) tends to be generally weak when using standard statistical inferences, but somewhat strong when using non-standard inference methods; (ii) when...

This paper uses a set of routinely collected high-frequency data in low-income countries (LICs) to construct an aggregate and a comprehensive index of economic activity which could serve (i) as a measure of the direction of economic activity; and (ii) as a useful input in analyzing...