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We aggregate information from the World Malaria Reports on 61 different antimalarial policies to develop an extensive synthetic index (MaPI) for 44 SSA countries between 1990 and 2017. We observe an increase of convergence in polices' implementation in the region, starting in more developed countries and reaching less developed countries from the mid-2000s. Using a difference-in-difference events study design, we find that prevention, diagnosis and treatment are key policies to reduce malaria mortality and prevalence: an increase of about 10 p.p. of these policies generates a mortality cumulative decrease of around 8 p.p. and a prevalence cumulative decrease of 13 p.p. after five years. We also use available data on policy coverage for a reduced subset of policies to construct an intensive margin version of the index. Main results are consistent to the ones derived from the extensive version. Finally, we prove the robustness of our results with a large battery of checks related to model specifications, econometric techniques, data sources and falsification tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the contribution of intergenerational transfers (inheritances and gifts) and family background to wealth inequality in four OECD countries: France, Spain, Great Britain, and the USA. We compare the observed wealth distribution with a non-parametric counterfactual distribution where all differences in wealth associated with intergenerational transfers and family background are removed. Despite the diversity of the countries analysed, we find similar patterns. The combined contribution of intergenerational transfers and family background to wealth inequality is sizeable in the four countries, ranging from 36% in Great Britain to 49% in the USA. When interactions between the two factors are accounted for, and the Shapley value decomposition is used to fully disentangle the contribution of each factor based on its marginal contribution, intergenerational transfers account for between 26% in Great Britain and 36% of wealth inequality in France, with family background ranging from 9% in France to 17% in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jedc.2006.10.007 Byline: Gustavo A. Marrero (a), Alfonso Novales (b) Abstract: In a growth model with public capital and a spillover externality from private capital, we find that income taxes as part of an optimal fiscal policy is a more common result than usually thought. The commitment to finance an exogenous component of public expenditures in the form of an exogenous fraction of output may lead to the optimality of positive income taxes. This result is robust to alternative assumptions on depreciation rates and preferences. We show that welfare losses from deviations from the optimal policy are always smaller when compensated with changes in income taxes than when adjusting lump-sum taxes. Author Affiliation: (a) Dpto. Analisis Economico, Universidad de La Laguna and ICAE, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain (b) Departamento de Economia Cuantitativa and ICAE, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Somosaguas, 28223 Madrid, Spain Article History: Received 10 January 2006; Accepted 25 October 2006

A comparative analysis between traditional and modern methodologies for national quarterly accounts forecasting is presented by using Monte Carlo experiment.