Recent efforts at poverty alleviation emphasize increasing government spending on education. However, even if spending were perfectly targeted, it is not evident that spending by itself will lead to higher educational attainment. Bolivian household data is used in this paper to ascertain the...

This paper aims to inform on the status of Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) in IMF-supported programs, detailing the results presented in the recent review of PRGF-supported programs. The review showed that more needs to be done, both in undertaking PSIA when necessary, and in reporting...

Recognizing that intrahousehold inequalities exist, this study focuses on the distribution of resources toward children across household types. A bargaining framework is used to test whether it matters who has control over resources. Results show that control over resources matters, as well as...

Using urban household surveys, we constructed a panel dataset to study the effects of the Argentine macroeconomic crisis of 1999-2002 with the aim of (1) identifying the most vulnerable households, (2) investigating whether employment in the public sector and government spending served to...

We examine the short- and long-term movements of government spending relative to output in 51 countries. We find that in the short term, the main components of government spending increase with output in about half of the sample countries, with some variation across spending categories and...

In many developing countries, a significant part of economic activity takes place in the informal sector. Earlier work has examined the determinants of the size of the informal sector, focusing separately on factors such as tax and regulation burden, financial market development, and the quality...

Using data drawn from 2010, 2012, and 2013 American Time Use Survey Well-Being Modules, this paper examines the existence of son preference among fathers in the U.S. by estimating the effect of child gender on the fathers' subjective well-being. A wide range of subjective well-being measures,...

Using data from the 2010, 2012, and 2013 American Time Use Survey Well-Being Modules, this paper examines how subjective well-being (SWB) varies between working at home and working in the workplace among wage/salary workers. Both OLS and individual fixed-effects models are employed for...

Currently, the real economy is the important basis for the development of a country, especially after the global financial crisis in 2008. Given that the manufacturing industry is the main part of the national real economy, many developed and developing countries have paid considerable attention...

Do religious women work less because they want to? To address this question, we consider whether the gender employment gap for six world religions can be explained by the gender gap in the employment happiness premium, defined as the happiness gain associated with being employed. We find that...