This paper is intended to provide an assessment of the impact of the silent revolution (decentralization reforms) of the last three decades on moving governments closer to people to establish fair, accountable, incorruptible and responsive governance. To accomplish this, a unique data set is...

A fiscal rule imposed when the budget is not transparent yields more creative accounting to circumvent it and less fiscal adjustment, generating hidden deficits/debts in public sector. This study focuses on creative accounting practices of governments and adds to the literature by measuring...

International migration not only enables individuals to earn higher wages but also exposes them to new environments. The norms and values experienced at the destination country could change the behavior of the migrant but also of family members left behind. In this paper we argue that a brain...

This paper substantiates the debate following Richard Florida’s suggestion to measure regional human capital by creative occupations rather than education. Consistent with Florida’s notion of creativity, it suggests a microfoundation that relates creativity to workers’ cognitive and...

The authors use information gathered from 122 studies on the effects of high school diplomas on wages in different countries worldwide to carry out a meta-analysis that shows high school diplomas have a statistically significant effect on wages of nearly 8 percent. This effect varies whether the...

This paper studies the impact of human capital on the adoption and diffusion of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in the Pakistani firms using the World Bank Enterprise Survey 2002-07. The paper considers various indicators of human capital and measures of ICT adoption and...

This paper analyses the German training system from the point of view of regional policy. The problems and prospects of the German system of first and further vocational training are addressed followed by an overview over macro and micro approaches to an empirical assessment of the regional...

We estimate educational production functions for seven Eastern European transition countries, using student-level TIMSS data for lower secondary education. The results show substantial effects of student background on educational performance and a much lower impact of resources and the...

Losing a parent is a trauma that has consequences for human capital formation. Does it matter at what age this trauma occurs? Using longitudinal data from the Kagera region in Tanzania that span thirteen years from 1991-2004, we find considerable impact heterogeneity across age at bereavement,...

We address the following question: how does a higher education funding system influence the trade-off that universities make between research and teaching? We do so by constructing a model that allows universities to choose actively the quality of their teaching and research when faced with...