This article reviews the economic literature on informality, its causes, and its consequences
for development. It covers a comprehensive body of research that ranges from well-identified …

The public health response to COVID-19 in many countries has involved strict restrictions on
movement and economic activity which threaten the livelihoods of economically vulnerable …

Can taxes on consumption redistribute in developing countries? Contrary to consensus, we
show that taxing consumption is progressive once we account for informal consumption …

This paper discusses theoretical aspects and evidences related to designing labor market
institutions in emerging market and developing economies. This note reviews the state of …

We build an equilibrium model of a small open economy with labor market frictions and
imperfectly enforced regulations. Heterogeneous firms sort into the formal or informal sector …

We investigate the impact of job loss on crime and the mitigating role of unemployment
benefits, exploiting detailed individual‐level data linking employment careers, criminal …

We study the spending profile of workers who experience both a positive transitory income
shock (lump-sum severance pay) and a negative permanent income shock (layoff). Using de …

Many empirical applications of regression discontinuity (RD) models use a running variable
that is rounded and hence discrete, eg age in years, or birth weight in ounces. This paper …

We conduct a comparative analysis of unemployment insurance (UI) schemes in advanced
and emerging economies. We find that almost all countries complement UI with severance …

The key assumption in regression discontinuity analysis is that the distribution of potential
outcomes varies smoothly with the running variable around the cutoff. In many empirical …