An emerging economic literature over the past decade has made use of international tests of educational achievement to analyze the determinants and impacts of cognitive skills. The cross-country comparative approach provides a number of unique advantages over national studies: It can exploit...

Education is a crucial asset for a country's economic prospects and for its inhabitants. In addition to its direct impact on growth via the accumulation of human capital, it is a critical ingredient in producing an informed citizenry, enhancing their ability to obtain and exert human and...

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was an extremely destructive event in Aceh, Indonesia, killing over 160,000 people and destroying infrastructure, homes, and livelihoods over miles of coastline. In its immediate aftermath, affected populations faced a daunting array of challenges. At the population...

Education has been given high priority by India’s central and state governments and continues to grow fast. School access has been expanded by investment in school infrastructure and recruitment of teachers. In higher education too, the number of providers continues to rise rapidly. A new law...

In this paper we study income polarization by first comparing the efficiency of two statistical models to identify the number of poles in the income distribution empirically. The statistical models used are a multi-resolution analysis (MRA) and a log-normal approach (LNA). We then apply the...