Although it is intuitive and morally compelling that the worst forms of child labour should be eliminated, banning them in poor countries is unlikely to be welfare improving and can come at the expense of human capital accumulation. We show that the existence of harmful forms of child labour, in...

In this paper we develop a simple heterogeneous-agent model with incomplete markets to explain the prevalence of a large low-productivity, informal sector in developing countries. In our model, the provision of public infrastructure creates a productivity premium for formalization, which...

We show that coordination failures may be part of an explanation for the demographic differences between rich and poor countries and their differing attitudes towards the use of child labor. Our analysis is carried out within a two-period, general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility,...

We show that coordination failures may be part of an explanation for the demographic differences between rich and poor countries and their differing attitudes towards the use of child labor. Our analysis is carried out within a two-period, general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility,...

In this paper, we show how coordination failures may explain the prevalence of child labor in developing countries. We do so within a simple game-theoretic setup. Child labor arises in our environment because of the lack of a coordination mechanism between parental decisions to invest in the...

We build a political economy model of state policy choice highlighting the challenges to breaking barriers to the adoption of inclusive policies in Africa. We highlight necessary and sufficient conditions for a political leader to gain from implementing exclusive policies: (i) Implementing...

Gains from trade come a certain degree of specialisation among trade partners. Specialisation in the case of an agriculture-based developing country might be feared to imply a higher reliance than ever on low skill labour. Trade might thus be seen as a step away from the much awaited structural...