The opportunity cost for men of pursuing a college degree has been rising due to the increase in the rewards to becoming a superstar in occupations typically dominated by men, like professional sports. This suggests a novel explanation for the evolution of the college gender gap (which shows a...

The authors bring new empirical evidence on the impact of the choice of ownership and regulatory regime on firms'productivity and prices paid by consumers. They collect the evidence from a sample of electricity distribution companies in Latin America. The authors rely on estimations of labor and...

We analyze the impact of alternative regulatory regimes on the labor productivity of electricity distribution firms in Latin America. We find that (i) incentive-based regimes lead to higher labor productivity than rate-of-return regulation, and (ii) privatized firms operating under rate of...

A decade of experience has shown that monitoring the performance of public and private monopolies is the hardest part of electricity sector reform in South America-because operators control most of the information needed for effective regulation. South American electricity regulators can reduce...