Using a panel fixed effects model for a sample of 121 countries covering 1975‐2005, we examine how financial development, financial liberalization and banking crises are related to income inequality. In contrast with most previous work, our results suggest that all finance variables increase...

Uniform health care delivered by a mainstream public insurer - such as the National Health Service (NHS), seldom satisfies heterogeneous demands for care, and some unsatisfied share of the population either use private health care, or purchase private insurance (PHI). One potential mechanism to...

Empirical studies show that years of schooling are positively correlated with good health. The implication may go from education to health, from health to education, or from factors that influence both variables. We formalize a model that determines an individual's demand for knowledge and...

Using annual data for 18 OECD countries over the period 1980-2004, we investigate how labour and financial factors interact to determine unemployment by estimating a dynamic panel model using the system generalized method of moments (GMM). We show that the impact of financial variables depends...

Credit rationing in the presence of asset inequality affects production and trade pattern in this paper, but not in the conventional way. A Ricardian general equilibrium framework with heterogeneous levels of asset ownership is developed to show that more equal asset distribution may contract...

This paper suggests that societies exhibiting a large degree of educational polarization among its populace are systematically more likely to slip into civil conflict and civil war. Intuitively, political preferences and beliefs of highly educated citizens are likely to differ fundamentally from...

This paper theoretically analyzes and empirically investigates the importance of local interaction between individuals of different linguistic groups for the provision of public goods at the national level. Depending on whether local interaction mitigates or reinforces antagonism towards other...

We analyze the worst currency carry loss episodes in recent decades, including causes, attribution by currency, timing, and the duration of carry drawdowns. To explore the determinants of the length of carry losses, a model of carry drawdown duration is estimated. We find evidence that drawdown...

We study whether the corporate tax system provides incentives for risky firm investment. We analytically and empirically show two main findings: first, risk-taking is positively related to the length of tax loss periods because the loss rules shift some risk to the government; and second, the...

Inter-country equity in the taxation of IP is a contentious issue. With its BEPS initiative, the OECD aims at taxing in accordance with value creation even though there are admitted difficulties in determining the actual place of value creation. The European Commission promotes the introduction...