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Since the Middle Ages the Jews have been engaged primarily in urban, skilled occupations, such as crafts, trade, finance, and medicine. This distinctive occupational selection occurred between the seventh and the ninth centuries in the Muslim Empire and then it spread to other locations. We...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005233730
We investigate whether a causal interpretation of the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth is appropriate and whether cross-country evidence supports a case for the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008469720
We consider a dual labor market with a frictional formal sector and a competitive informal sector. We show that the size of the informal sector is generally too large compared to the optimal allocation of the workers. It follows that our results give a rationale to informality-reducing policies.
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010744669
Using newly collected national and sub-national data and historical case studies, this paper argues that differences in innovative capacity, captured by the density of engineers at the dawn of the Second Industrial Revolution, are important to explaining present income differences, and, in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010790517
This paper investigates the causal consequences of Tropical Storm Agatha (2010) – the strongest tropical storm ever to strike Guatemala since rainfall records have been kept – on household welfare. The analysis reveals substantial negative effects, particularly among urban households. Per...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011149769
We examine economic growth, inequality and education when the wellspring of growth is the formation of human capital through a combination of the quality of child-rearing and formal schooling. The existence of multiple steady states is established, including a poverty trap, wherein children work...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005761977
This article summarizes three different strands of the literature that address the labor market effects of language-related human capital. (1) A general importance is demonstrated in the empirical evidence on earnings and employment effects of literacy as the ability to productively use written...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010959721
This paper examines how productivity effects of human capital and innovation vary at different points of the … conditional productivity distribution. Our analysis draws upon two large unbalanced panels of 6,634 enterprises in Germany and 14 … are more dispersed in the Netherlands. In both countries, we observe non-linearities in the productivity effects of …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010959824
We analyze the efficiency and productivity growth of a representative sample of Portuguese hospitals from 1997 to 2004 …, using an innovative approach by employing the directional distance function and the Luenberger productivity indicator. The … productivity indicator that is decomposed into the usual constituents of productivity growth: technological change and efficiency …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005233852
This paper is no longer available.
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010552468