In this paper we present a theoretical model of higher education participation. We assume that young people that complete upper secondary education are faced with three choices, go to higher education, not go to higher education or go to higher education and work part time. Utilizing the Living...

The stock of human capital in an area is important for regional economic growth and development. However, highly educated workers are often quite mobile and there is a concern that public investments in college graduates may not benefit the state if the college graduates leave the state after...

To be competitive in the global economy, some argue that Latin American countries need to reduce or eliminate labor market regulations such as minimum wage legislation because they constrain job creation and hence increase poverty. On the other hand, minimum wage increases can have a direct...

Taking advantage of a complex minimum wage structure in Honduras, this paper examines how changes in minimum wages over the 1990-2004 period affect unemployment as well as the employment and average wages of workers in different sectors of the economy: medium and large-scale firms v. small firms...

Despite increasing average real family incomes in Costa Rica in the late 1990s and early 2000s, poverty rates did not fall. In this paper, we argue that during this period economic growth in Costa Rica did not translate into reduced poverty because of changes in family structure and in the labor...

In this paper I use a unique data set from Nicaragua to asses the behavior of persons who send money back home. I estimate a heteroskedastic Tobit with a known form of variance to estimate the correlation of the remitting decisions of migrants. Working, residing in a developed country and...

In the last two decades remittances have gained interest due to their large size. For several developing countries remittances constitute a large portion of their GDP and sometimes exceed FDI. While FDIs are usually profit driven, it is not clear what the driving force behind remittances is....

We document changes in income and earnings inequality in the five Central American countries from the early 1990s to 2009. In the 1990s Costa Rica had the most equal distribution of income in Central America, and one of the most equal distributions of income in Latin America. At the other...

We investigate whether universities select by, or also shape, their students' personality, as implied by the human capital investment model. Using a nationally representative sample of Australian adolescents followed over eight years, we find that youth conscientiousness, internal locus of...

Over the last decade, many countries have experienced dramatic increases in university enrolment, which, when not matched by compensating increases in other inputs, have resulted in larger class sizes. Using administrative records from a leading UK university, we present evidence on the effects...