infonet-economy

Access to formal banking is increasing across the world and may transform how people manage their finances. We report from a field experiment that randomly provides access to a bank account to a representative sample of villagers in rural India. The treated respondents save actively into the account and their individual savings increase. There is, however, no significant impact on...

As the International Labour Organization (ILO) celebrates its centenary, its founding precept remains as relevant as ever: the main breeding grounds for threats to peace are the injustices and unequal opportunities that result from ongoing economic transformation. The moral idea that forged the ILO still lies at the heart of the international efforts for peace and development driving...

Au cours de la crise financière mondiale, la politique monétaire israélienne a eu recours à des mesures non conventionnelles parallèlement à des réductions énergiques du taux d’intérêt de la banque centrale. L’expérience acquise par Israël dans l’utilisation de ce type de mesures pendant la crise, leur suppression aux premiers signes de reprise et l’usage prolongé de l’une d’entre...

The last few decades witnessed a dramatic change in public opinion towards gay people. This paper uses a difference-in-difference empirical strategy to investigate the hypothesis that the AIDS epidemic and the ensuing endogenous political process led to this transformation. We show that the process of change was discontinuous over time and show suggestive evidence that the '92...

The paper presents some evidence on the overwhelming relevance of systemic risk and the lesser importance of US interest rates in the global transmission of shocks. This evidence suggests that the literature could benefi…t from incorporating global con…dence variables into global frameworks in the study of the global transmission of shocks. As framework, we used a global semi-...

This paper reviews the economic and historical literature on debt mutualization in Europe with reference to pre-1914 guaranteed bonds and current Eurobonds debate. We emphasize that, notwithstanding the differences in scale and nature, debt mutualization solutions similar to Eurobonds were tried before, and the closest historical examples to the present debate are the pre-1914...

We show that an increase in aggregate uncertainty -measured by stock market volatility- reduces productivity growth more in industries that depend heavily on external finance. The mechanism at play is that during periods of high uncertainty, firms that are credit constrained switch the composition of investment by reducing productivity-enhancing investment- such as on ICT capital-...

The literature on drivers of capital flows stresses the prominent role of global financial factors. Recent empirical work, however, highlights how this role varies across countries and time, and this heterogeneity is not well understood. We revisit this question by focusing on financial intermediaries' funding flows in different currencies. A portfolio model shows that the sign and...

In this double issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy we publish a set of papers concerned with the mobilization of domestic and foreign capital in support of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals that were launched in September 2015. The papers were originally presented at a conference on 'Financing for Development' organized by the International Monetary Fund and...