Does emigration really drain human capital accumulation in origin countries? This paper explores a unique household survey designed and conducted to answer this research question. We analyze the case of Cape Verde, a country with allegedly the highest ‘brain drain’ in Africa, despite a...

This study constructs a simple, two-sector Malthusian model with agriculture and industry, and uses it to identify the determinants of income in a Malthusian equilibrium. We make standard assumptions about preferences and technologies, but in contrast to existing studies we assume that children...

How do neighbors positively or negatively influence individuals living in rural Malawi to learn their HIV results? Using data of location of homes and distance to neighbors, we measure the social network effects of neighbors' learning their HIV results on individuals own learning. Using the fact...

We study the dynamic general equilibrium effects of introducing a social pension program to elderly informal sector workers in developing countries who lack formal risk sharing mechanisms against income and longevity risks. To this end, we formulate a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model...

What happens when a previously uncovered labor market is regulated? We exploit the introduction of a minimum wage in South Africa and variation in the intensity of this law to identify increases in wages for domestic workers and no statistically significant effects on employment on the intensive...

For many questions, it is crucial to know the extent of domestic value added (DVA) in a country's exports, but the computation is more complicated when processing trade is pervasive. We propose a method for computing domestic and foreign contents that allows for processing trade. By applying our...

This paper studies the relationship between investor protection and income inequality. In the presence of market frictions, better protection makes investors more willing to take on entrepreneurial risk when lending to firms, thereby improving the degree of risk sharing between financiers and...

Teachers differ greatly in how much they teach their students, but little is known about which teacher attributes account for this. We estimate the causal effect of teacher subject knowledge on student achievement using within-teacher within-student variation, exploiting a unique Peruvian...

By improving access, without altering the underlying information, computerization of land registration provides a unique case to test for credit supply effects of improved land administration that have often been elusive in the literature. We exploit the variation in the timing of the shift from...

In this paper, we develop a theoretical model of household production, bargaining and credit to analyse how access to microcredit affects intra-household decision-making and welfare, and identify conditions under which female household members are most likely to benefit. We show that, consistent...