Cognitive performance in late adulthood is critical for better welfare and understanding the causes of human capital depreciation in old age is increasingly crucial in aging societies. Using data from South Africa, we study how early life education affects cognition, a component of human capital...

Numerous studies have considered the important role of cognition in estimating the returns to schooling. How cognitive abilities affect schooling may have important policy implications, especially in developing countries during periods of increasing educational attainment. Using two longitudinal...

We exploit the pre-reform employment composition of Indian districts and differential tariff cuts across industries introduced by the 1991 trade liberalization to examine the impact of liberalization on human capital accumulation measured by completion of different stages of schooling and...

Distinguishing between short-run and long-run outcomes we provide new insight into the relationship between education and migration. We examine the specific link between the acquisition of high levels of human capital in the form of university education in Turkey and migration to Germany. We...

Studies have shown that the previously growing inequality in China has stabilized and even declined since 2008 (Kanbur et al., 2021), nevertheless, the drivers of the latest trans-formation in income inequality remain to be unraveled. We address this research gap by examining the changes in the...

How does foreign direct investment (FDI) liberalization shape structural transformation and demographic change in developing countries? We provide new evidence on this question using five waves of Chinese census data between 1990 and 2015, exploiting quasi-exogenous variation in FDI...

Refugees are mainly hosted in low-income countries, where they often remain for a long time. Therefore, it is important to assess how they integrate with the local economy and to what extent their presence can contribute to the transition to a more dynamic economic environment. Proximity between...

We investigate the impact of groundwater contamination on educational outcomes in India. Our study leverages variations in the geographical coverage and timing of construction of safe government piped water schemes to identify the effects of exposure to contaminants. Using self-collected survey...

Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia face challenges competing on the global markets, as shown by their relatively low and stagnant export shares. The limited export competitiveness has hampered external demand, growth and employment. Applying, for the first time to North Africa, the stock-flow approach...

Experimental evidence on a range of interventions in developing countries is accumulating rapidly. Is it possible to extrapolate from an experimental evidence base to other locations of policy interest (from "reference" to "target" sites)? And which factors determine the accuracy of such an...