infonet-economy

This paper surveys the recent literature on the links between public debt and economic growth in advanced economies. We find that theoretical models yield ambiguous results. Whether high levels of public debt have a negative effect on long-run growth is thus an empirical question. While many papers have found a negative correlation between debt and growth, our reading of the...

How can the private sector work for development? This paper provides answers to this question from the firms’ perspective by examining the trade-offs that private firms face between maximizing their profits and achieving a positive social impact. In particular, it considers the experience of microfinance as the best available data source from the point of view of a firm engaged in...

African politics are often said to be dominated by ethnic divides, with the ensuing policies implemented by leaders being based almost exclusively on their ethnic power base. In this paper, we demonstrate that the village of origin of democratically-elected leaders matters for the attribution of development projects in the context of one of the largest Community-Driven Development (...

We develop a theoretical model of international trade pricing in which individual exporters and importers bargain over the transaction price and exposure to exchange rate fluctuations. We find that the choice of price and invoicing currency respects the full market structure, including the extent of fragmentation and the degree of heterogeneity across importers and across exporters...

This paper describes a newly collected dataset on export tax rates, which provides comprehensive coverage for 20 countries, 2 time periods and all products at HS6 level. Export tax rates are based on national government documentation, including preferential provisions for partner countries. The data are organized in a harmonized and comparable format, including ad-valorem equivalents...

We consider essential heterogeneity in the impact of a large-scale Community-Driven Development (CDD) program in Senegal. Essential heterogeneity arises when unobservables determine the idiosyncratic gains from participation in a program, thereby generating correlation between treatment effects and selection. Standard instrumental variables estimates are shown to provide an extremely...

The WTO’s predicament is a puzzle. Compared to other international organisations it is a huge success, yet the WTO is widely regarded as suffering from a deep malaise. Exhibit A is the inability to conclude a round of multilateral trade negotiations. The last one came in 1994; the current talks (the Doha Round) are in their ninth year and far from done.1 Exhibit B is that most WTO...

Improvement of educational attainment in schools in urban, disadvantaged areas is an important priority for policy – particularly in countries like England which have a long tail at the bottom of the educational distribution and where there is much concern about low social mobility. An anomaly in the spatial dimension of school funding policy in England allows us to examine the...