Would better state institutions increase tax collection, or would higher tax collection help improve state institutions? In the absence of conclusive guidance from theory, this paper searches for an empirical answer to this question, using a panel dataset covering 110 non-resource-rich countries...

This paper is the first attempt to directly explore the long-run nonlinear relationship between theshadow economy and level of development. Using a dataset of 158 countries over the period from1996 to 2015, our results reveal a robust U-shaped relationship between the shadow economy sizeand GDP...

The multiple indicator-multiple cause (MIMIC) method is a well-established tool for measuring informal economic activity. However, it has been criticized because GDP is used both as a cause and indicator variable. To address this issue, this paper applies for the first time the light intensity...

Do discretionary spending cuts and tax increases hurt social well-being? To answer this question, we combine subjective well-being data covering over half a million of individuals across 13 European countries, with macroeconomic data on fiscal consolidations. We find that fiscal consolidations...

This paper explores conditions and policies that could affect the matching between labor demand and supply. We identify shifts in the Beveridge curves for 12 OECD countries between 2000Q1 and 2013Q4 using three complementary methodologies and analyze the short-run determinants of these shifts by...