Freedom, Opportunity and Wellbeing
This paper reexamines key results from the measurement of opportunity freedom, or the extent to which a set of options offers a decision maker real opportunities....
Working Papers
This list captures all of the most recent papers that have been uploaded to this website. For a FULL list of 'Working Papers' from IIEP please visit this archived version of our website.
Third Country Effects on the Formation of Free Trade Agreements
The recent proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has resulted in an increasingly complex network of preferential trading relationships. The economics.....
Third Country Effects on the Formation of Free Trade Agreements
The recent proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has resulted in an increasingly complex network of preferential trading relationships. The economics...
Taxes, Prisons, and CFOs: The Effects of Increased Punishment on Corporate Tax Compliance in Ecuador
This paper takes advantage of a rich firm level data set from Ecuador to analyze the effects of a reform in 2007 that introduced imprisonment for tax evasion..
The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) Poverty Measures: Twenty-Five Years Later
Twenty-five years ago, the FGT class of decomposable poverty measures was introduced in Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke [54]. The present study provides a retrospective...
We introduce new approaches to research on poverty traps, focusing on changes in patterns of equilibria over time and across regions, applied to the Ethiopia....
Do Cheaters Bunch Together? Profit Taxes, Withholding Rates and Tax Evasion
We use firm-level administrative data from Ecuador to study the implications of ‘reverse withholding’ for firms’ tax behavior. Withholding does not affect tax....
On Measuring Vulnerability to Poverty
There is a growing interest on dynamic and broader concepts of deprivation such as vulnerability, which takes in to account the destitution of individuals from...
How China’s Employment Problems Became Trade Problems: China, Labour Law and the Rule of Law
In this article, I focus on the potential trade spillovers of Chinese policies to maintain employment. Chinese leaders are determined to maintain employment and...
Unexpected Bedfellows: The GATT, the WTO, and Some Democratic Rights
The world’s most misunderstood international institution, the World Trade Organization (WTO) sits in a grand palace on the shores of Lake Geneva. This.....
How Well Does ‘Core’ CPI Measure Long-Run Inflation
We decompose core CPI and the food and energy CPI measures into permanent and transitory components using a correlated unobserved components model, to examine...
How Well Does “Core” CPI Capture Permanent Price Changes?
We decompose core CPI and the food and energy CPI measures into permanent and transitory components using a correlated unobserved components model, to examine....
Nigeria is awash in oil; Mali is flush with gold reserves; and Peru has abundant copper. These resources belong to the people, and thus, Nigerians, Malians, and..
Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) can be an important component of social protection policy and there is “…considerable evidence that CCTs have improved the....
Climate Change and the World Trading System
Dr. Steve Charnovitz – GWU Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jisun Kim – Peterson Institute This event was made possible by a generous grant........
Location Decision of Heterogeneous Multinational Firms
We examine how multinational rms with heterogeneous total factor productivity (TFP) self-select into di¤erent host countries. Both aggregate- and rm-level..............
Aggregate Income Shocks and Infant Mortality in the Developing World
Health and income are strongly correlated both within and across countries, yet the extent to which improvements in income have a causal effect on health status....
Jointly Evaluating GDP and Inflation Forecasts in the Context of the Taylor Rule
Individuals, businesses, and government policymakers use economic forecasts as guides to many important economic and financial decisions. Thus, it is.......
Lazy Banks? Government Borrowing and Private Credit: Evidence from Developing Countries
When government borrows one dollar from domestic banking sector, how much does it reduce private credit in developing countries? There is surprisingly no.....
Can the Fed Predict the State of the Economy
Recent research has documented that the Federal Reserve produces systematic errors in forecasting inflation, real GDP growth, and the unemployment rate, even...
Governments provide public information about economic conditions to reduce information imperfections and facilitate efficient allocation of resources. Do.....
The Matching of Heterogeneous Firms and Politicians
We use a unique Chinese rm-director panel dataset and a simple assignment model to examine the matching mechanism of heterogeneous rms and politicians. Based on....
Third-Country Effects in Multinational Production Networks
The majority of multinational rms today operate a multilateral production network. Most existing empirical analyses have, however, focused on rms choice between.....
Coping with Rising Food Prices: Policy Dilemmas in the Developing World
This paper examines the policy dilemmas and challenges faced by developing country governments when confronted with rising food prices, especially when it comes..................
Location Decision of Heterogeneous Multinational Firms
In this paper we examine how multinational firms with varied levels of total factor productivity (TFP) self-select into di¤erent host countries..........