Family-owned firms account for majority of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Arab countries, but evidence on the impact of this ownership type on access to credit in the region is scarce. Yet the issue is key for understanding barriers to the emergence of dynamic private sector and...

Decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation and climate change, increasing resource efficiency, and promoting both sustainable production and sustainable lifestyles is a challenge in North Africa, a region where even a relative decoupling of income growth and carbon (CO2) emissions...

Many emerging markets have undertaken significant financial sector reforms especially in their banking sectors that have been quite critical for both financial development and real economic activity. In this paper, we investigate the success of banking reforms in India where significant banking...

The effect of exchange rate regimes on economic performance is one of the key questions in international economics, both academically and policy-wise. Based on the theory of Optimum Currency Areas (OCA), we examine how labor market regulations affect the relationship between exchange rate...

We quantify and study state-level economic policy uncertainty. Tapping digital archives for nearly 3,500 local newspapers, we construct three monthly indexes for each state: one that captures state and local sources of policy uncertainty (ΕPU-S), one that captures national and international...

Using micro-data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique, this paper contributes to knowledge on gender-gaps in financial literacy (FL) via a study of teenagers, emerging adults and young adults. The analysis...

Both personal bankruptcy and redistributive taxes can insure households' consumption risk and both vary considerably across US states. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptions less attractive both for the intratemporal insurance and for...

This study estimates the impact of financial deregulation on top income shares. Using the novel econometric method of constructing synthetic control groups, we show that the "Big Bang"-deregulations in the United Kingdom in 1986 and Japan 1997-1999 increased the share of pre-tax incomes going to...

In 2002, an amendment to UK parliamentary regulations removed restrictions on the participation of members of parliament (MPs) in parliamentary proceedings related to their corporate interests. Using this amendment as a quasi-natural experiment, we demonstrate gains in firm value and...

We develop a model of regulation of service-delivery NGOs, where future grants are conditional on prior spending of some minimal proportion of current revenue on direct project-related expenses. Such regulation induces some NGOs to increase current project spending, but imposes wasteful costs of...