With the use of comparable data from seven West African capitals, we attempt to assess the rationale behind development policies targeting high rates of school enrolment through the prism of allocation of labour and returns to skills across the formal and informal sectors. We find that people...

R&D-based growth theory suggests that a larger population size raises either the long-run rate of economic growth (strong scale effect) or the level of per capita income (weak scale effect), with far-reaching policy implications. However, for modern times there is little empirical support for...

Creativity is changing the way cities approach economic development and formulate policy.Creative metropolises base their economic development strategies, at least partly, on building communities attractive to the creative class worker. While there are countless examples of high-tech regions...

Internal inconsistencies are so commonplace in studies using the contingent valuation method(CVM) that it has been argued that that method should be abandoned as a means of preferenceelicitation in favour of other methods such as standard gambles (SG). The experiment described inthis paper finds...

Personnel records are used to examine compensation, recruitment, and retention of a group of very highly skilled workers: civilian scientists and engineers in U.S. Department of Defense laboratories. In contrast to the private sector, returns to skills were largely flat for this group from...

Foreign language skills represent a form of human capital that can be rewarded in the labor market. Drawing on data from the Adult Education Survey of 2007, this is the first study estimating returns to foreign language skills in Turkey. We contribute to the literature on the economic value of...

Foreign language skills represent a form of human capital that can be rewarded in the labor market. Drawing on data from the Adult Education Survey of 2007, this is the first study estimating returns to foreign language skills in Turkey. We contribute to the literature on the economic value of...

Foreign language skills represent a form of human capital that can be rewarded in the labor market. Drawing on data from the Adult Education Survey of 2007, this is the first study estimating returns to foreign language skills in Turkey. We contribute to the literature on the economic value of...

Foreign language skills represent a form of human capital that can be rewarded in the labor market. Drawing on data from the Adult Education Survey of 2007, this is the first study estimating returns to foreign language skills in Turkey. We contribute to the literature on the economic value of...

Since 1990, Taiwan increased the college share of its labor force from 7% to 28% by converting junior colleges to 4-year colleges.  Such a rapid surge in skill supply should suppress college wages and lower income inequality.  Instead, inequality rose steadily.  The surge of weaker college...