Distributional consequences typically receive limited attention in economic models that analyze the effects of monetary and financial sector policies. These consequences deserve more attention since financial markets are incomplete, imperfect, and economic agents' access to them is often...

This paper uses micro data from the New Earnings Survey to document that cross-sectional wage inequality in the U.K., which rose sharply in the 1980s and continued to rise moderately through the mid-1990s, has remained essentially unchanged in the latter half of the 1990s. As in the U.S.,...

"This paper provides an overview of the complex conceptual and practical challenges that emerging market economies face as they attempt to reform their frameworks for financial regulation. These economies are striving to balance the quest for financial stability with the imperatives of financial...

Initial inequality in endowments and opportunities, together with low average levels of endowments, can create constituencies in a society that combine to paralyze reforms, even though the status quo hurts them collectively. Each constituency prefers reforms that expand its opportunities, but in...