Many governments have initiated public employment programs or expanded the existing ones in response to high unemployment. However, in many middle-income countries, a relatively large government coexists with persistently high unemployment. This paper explores the question of whether public...

This paper empirically assesses the role of structural and institutional reforms in driving productivity growth across countries at different stages of development, using a distance-to-frontier framework. It gauges whether particular policies and reforms matter more for increasing productivity...

The economic literature has examined deposit dollarization in nominal terms, typically focusing on the ratio of foreign currency deposits to broad money. However, while private agent demand for foreign currency may remain unchanged in foreign currency terms, there could be large fluctuations in...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of how the frequency and severity of terrorism affectgovernment revenue and expenditure during the period 1970-2013 using a panel dataset on153 countries. We find that terrorism has only a marginal negative effect on tax revenueperformance, after...

Economic Development, Inequality and War shows how economic decline, income inequality, pervasive rent seeking by ruling elites, political authoritarianism, military centrality and competition for mineral exports contribute to war and humanitarian emergencies. Economic regress and political...

We construct unanticipated government spending shocks for 103 developing countries from 1990 to 2015 and study their effects on income distribution. We find that unanticipated fiscal consolidations lead to a long-lasting increase in income inequality, while fiscal expansions lower inequality....

What do we know about the output effects of fiscal policy in low income countries (LICs)? There are very few empirical studies on the subject. This paper fills this gap by estimating the output effects of government spending shocks in LICs. Our analysis-based on the local projection method-finds...

Over the past seven years, the DIG and DIGNAR models have complemented the IMF and World Bank debt sustainability framework (DSF) analysis, over 65 country applications. They have provided useful insights in the context of program and surveillance work, based on qualitative and quantitative...

We quantitatively investigate the macroeconomic and distributional impacts of fiscal consolidations in low-income countries (LICs) through value added tax (VAT), personal income tax (PIT), and corporate income tax (CIT). We extend the standard heterogeneous agents incomplete markets model by...