This paper analyzes the role of networks in the spatial diffusion of local economic shocks in Africa. We show that road and ethnic connectivity are particularly important factors for diffusing economic spillovers over longer distances. We then determine the key players, i.e., which districts are...

We use recent immigration data from 195 countries and propose an index of population diversity based on people's birthplaces. This new index is then decomposed into a size (share of foreign born) and a variety (diversity of immigrants) component and is available for 1990 and 2000 disaggregated...

Do populations grow as countries become richer? In this paper we estimate the effects on population growth of shocks to national income that are plausibly exogenous and unlikely to be driven by technological change. For a panel of over 139 countries spanning the period 1960-2007 we interact...

This paper provides a quantitative investigation of the strength of the potential relationship between entrepreneurial activity and religious affiliation. The relationship between religion and economic development has attracted recent attention. A positive association may indicate that religion...

This paper investigates the causal consequences of Tropical Storm Agatha (2010) - the strongest tropical storm ever to strike Guatemala since rainfall records have been kept - on household welfare. The analysis reveals substantial negative effects, particularly among urban households. Per capita...

We analyze the economic consequences for less developed countries of investing in female health. In so doing we introduce a novel micro-founded dynamic general equilibrium framework in which parents trade off the number of children against investments in their education and in which we allow for...

Billions of dollars have been spent on participatory development programs in the developing world. These programs give community members an active decision-making role. Given the emphasis on community involvement, one might expect that the effectiveness of this approach would depend on...

There is a growing body of literature exploring the skill content of jobs. This paper contributes to this research by using data on the task content of occupations in developing countries, instead of U.S. data, as most existing studies do. The paper finds that indexes based on U.S. data do not...

Maddison's international panel data show that technically it was the faster growth rate of the US economy that led to its overtaking the UK as economic superpower. We explore the contributing factors. Identifying the land-grant colleges system triggered by the 1862/1890 Morrill Acts (MAs) as a...

This paper provides two contributions to the study of intergenerational mobility. First, we render a thorough characterization of education mobility in Turkey at the national level, including a three-generation mobility analysis. We find that the education mobility is significantly lower in...