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This paper tests for convergence in labour productivity at the local level in 10 sub‐Saharan countries, disaggregated into 1136 administrative entities. This work combines nighttime lights data and a unique set of population censuses to produce local measures of growth, employment and sectoral shares. We find evidence of unconditional convergence across sectors in the range of 2%. However, convergence is heterogeneous and conditional on both manufacturing and services employment shares. Convergence is also associated with proximity to the main city, moderate population density, low land suitability and relatively moderate temperature. Finally, the within effect dominates the between effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper builds on the Goodwin (1967) model which describes the distributive cycle of capitalist economies whereby mass unemployment is generated periodically through the conflict about income distribution between capital and labor. We add to this model a segmented labor market structure with fluid, latent, and stagnant components. The model exhibits a unique balanced growth path which depends on the speeds with which workers are pushed into or out of the labor market segments. We investigate the stability properties of this growth path with segmented labor markets and find that, though there is a stabilizing inflation barrier term in the wage Phillips curve, the interaction with the latent and stagnant portions of the labor market generates potentially (slowly) destabilizing forces if policy measures are absent that regulate these labor markets. We then introduce an activating labor market policy, where government in addition acts as employer of last resort thereby eliminating the stagnant portion of the labor market, whilst erecting benefit systems that partially sustain the incomes of workers that have to leave the floating/latent labor market of the private sector of the economy. We show that such policies guarantee the macrostability of the economy's balanced growth path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] This paper presents a model of financial instability with household debt. [•] Household debt interacts with functional income distribution and credit supply. [•] Financial fragility arises through a Fisher effect in the first case. [•] Instability arises through a debt financed consumption boom in the second case. [•] The model also looks at debt default and capital adequacy ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The present paper investigates five episodes of currency collapse from the perspective of non-financial firms operating in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. We focus on two aspects: wealth and income transfers from borrowing firms to lenders and firm heterogeneity. At the firm level, we find that the currency collapses are preceded and associated with sharply rising financial transfers from firms to lenders. The debt and income structure is central in explaining the asymmetric firm dynamics. Most affected are firms with high levels of unhedged foreign-currency debt. At the country level, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico display three contrasting examples. Argentina has a large currency mismatch, Brazil balances the currency denomination of debt and income (natural hedge), and Mexico occupies an intermediate position. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]