Despite the tremendous human suffering caused by natural disasters, their effects on economic growth remain unclear, with some studies reporting negative, and others indicating no or even positive effects. To reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings reported in the literature, this study...

We examine how formal and informal contract enforcing institutions interact in a competitive market with asymmetric information where consumers do not observe quality before purchase. Firm level incentives for producing high quality can be achieved with an informal enforcement mechanism,...

type="main" xml:id="ecpo12026-abs-0001" <p>This article builds on a comprehensive dataset for Peru that merges municipal fiscal accounts with information about municipalities’ characteristics such as population, poverty, education, and local politics to analyze the leading factors affecting the...</p>

Despite large deregulation efforts, informal economic activity still represents a large share of GDP in many developing countries. In this paper we look at incentives to reduce informal activity when capitalists in the formal sector regulate entry. We consider a dual economy with a formal sector...

We reexamine the association between poverty, the middle class, and institutional outcomes using a newly developed cross-country panel dataset containing detailed information on the distribution of income and expenditure. When the size of the middle class increases (measured as the proportion of...

Summary Is informal employment a safety net or a growth engine? To address this question, this paper studies the trends and cycles of informal employment. It first presents a theoretical model of long- and short-run behavior of informal labor. Then it analyzes these relationships empirically,...

We examine how formal and informal contract enforcing institutions interact in a competitive market with asymmetric information where consumers do not observe quality before purchase. Firm level incentives for producing high quality can be achieved with an informal enforcement mechanism,...