In the immediate aftermath of World War II, millions of German expellees were resettled into the new borders of Germany, but not into the parts of Germany that were occupied by France. Using a spatial regression discontinuity framework, I estimate the persistence of the population shock over a...

I examine the impact of student incentives in Benin, using three different designs that can be implemented relatively cheaply and with administrative data. The first design is a standard incentive structure where students receive monetary rewards for reaching a performance target. In the other...

Differences in relative female employment by soil texture are used to explain the heterogeneous deficit of female children across districts within India. Soil texture varies exogenously and determines the depth of land tillage. Deep tillage, possible in loamy but not in clayey soil textures,...

Exploiting within-firm, over-time variation in plan parameters for nearly 10,000 Long Term Disability (LTD) policies held by US employers, we present the first empirical analysis of the determinants of private LTD spells. We find that a shorter waiting period and a higher replacement rate...

Using the dismantling of the Multi-fibre Arrangement quotas on Chinese textile products in conjunction with China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), within firms adjustments to intensified low-wage competition is analyzed. Employing Danish employer-employee matched data covering...

We analyze a Massachusetts merit aid program that gives highscoring students tuition waivers at in-state public colleges with lower graduation rates than available alternative colleges. A regression discontinuity design comparing students just above and below the eligibility threshold finds that...

We report an experiment in 3,000 villages that tested whether incentives improve aid efficacy. Villages received block grants for maternal and child health and education that incorporated relative performance incentives. Subdistricts were randomized into incentives, an otherwise identical...

This paper explores the gains from trade in differentiated products from three channels: decreases in price, improvements in quality, and increases in variety. Using data on Indian imports of computer printers from 1996 to 2005, a period of trade liberalization, I find that quality was the...

Citizenship rights are associated with better economic opportunities for immigrants. This paper studies how in a country with a large fraction of temporary migrants the fertility decisions of foreign citizens respond to a change in the rules that regulate child legal status at birth. The...

Well-functioning credit markets play a key role in boosting overall economic growth, but their impact on distributional outcomes is much less clear. I use a quasi-experimental setting provided by branch banking deregulation, an important episode of US financial development, to study the...