We examine the relationship between oil price windfalls and labor market regulation empirically through panel regressions in a sample of 83 countries spanning 1970-2014. We find that oil price windfall gains lead to a deregulation of the labor market in autocracies but have no effects in...

In the 1990s the mainstream consensus was that trade causes growth. Subsequent research shed doubt on the consensus view, as evidence suggested that the identification of the effect of trade on growth was problematic in the existing literature. This paper contributes to this debate by focusing...

This paper presents estimates of the relationship between the share of income accruing to the middle class and gross domestic product per capita of economies from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The increase in gross domestic product per capita that these economies experienced during...

This paper presents estimates of the effects that terms of trade volatility has on growth of real gross domestic product per capita. Based on five-year non-overlapping panel data comprising 175 countries during 1980-2010, the paper finds that: (i) in model specifications that do not include...

Labor market deregulation, intended to boost productivity and employment, is one plausible, yet little studied, driver of the decline in labor shares that took place across most advanced economies since the early 1990s. This paper assesses the impact of job protection deregulation in a sample of...

The aim of this SDN is to examine whether fear of a political cost associated with economic reforms is justified by the available evidence, and whether there are lessons from how economic policies might be adjusted to mitigate any political cost. The paper will be based on a new comprehensive...

Economic development and growth depend on a country's young people. With most of their working life ahead of them they make up about a third of the working-age population in the typical emerging market and developing economy. But the youth in these economies face a daunting labor market-about 20...