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 …

Should developing countries give all of their citizens enough money to live on? Interest in
this idea has grown enormously in recent years, reflecting both positive results from a …

The winners of the Nobel Prize show how economics, when done right, can help us solve
the thorniest social and political problems of our day. Figuring out how to deal with today's …

Why do living standards differ so much across countries? A consensus in the development
literature is that differences in productivity are a dominant source of these differences. But …

An optimal pace of business dynamics—encompassing the processes of entry, exit,
expansion, and contraction—would balance the benefits of productivity and economic …

Why are people in the richest countries of the world so much richer today than 100 years
ago? And why are some countries so much richer than others? Questions such as these …

We study the effects of becoming a supplier to multinational corporations (MNCs) using tax
data tracking firm-to-firm transactions in Costa Rica. Event study estimates reveal that …

This article reviews an emerging body of evidence on relational contracts, defined as
informal arrangements sustained by the value of future interactions. We focus on developing …

Almost all firms in developing countries have fewer than ten workers, with a modal size of
one. Are there potential high-growth entrepreneurs, and can public policy help identify them …

We build a model of firm-level innovation, productivity growth, and reallocation featuring
endogenous entry and exit. A new and central economic force is the selection between high …