Analysis of Indian NSS data reveal the following: (i) Scheduled castes and tribes, other backward classes and Muslims are seriously under-represented in India’s colleges relative to their population shares. (ii) This can be mostly explained by their low higher secondary school completion...

We compare four explanations for the value of diplomas, each of which has implications for unemployment and wage variation amongst graduates, most of which have not previously been tested for when seeking to explain the effects of diplomas. We test for these implications using a refined...

Between 1981 and 2008, US college attainment rates rose faster for young women than men. However, after the 2008 “Mancession,” male attainment rose faster than female attainment. The most widely supported explanations for women’s domination of the pre-2008 college expansion (improved...

The share of nanotechnology publications involving authors from more than one country more than doubled in the 1990s, but then fell again till 2004, before recovering somewhat during the latter years of the decade. Meanwhile, the share of nanotechnology papers involving at least one Chinese...

We assemble a large database of countries' manufacturing employment and output shares for 1970-2010. We ask whether increased global competition and labor-displacing technological change have made it more difficult for countries to industrialize in employment, and whether there are alternative...

We ask whether shifting male and female employment patterns can help to explain why the US college boom between 1981 and 2005 was dominated by women. We make three contributions. First, we show that while a massive feminization of high-wage, high-skill occupations plausibly contributed to the...

This paper considers quality control in a program that distributes subsidized food. The standard theory of price controls and participatory approaches to food security both suggest that the quality of subsidized food and distribution services may be lower in vulnerable communities. We examine...