Economic development in Latin America has trailed most other world regions over the past four decades despite its relatively high initial development and school attainment levels. This puzzle can be resolved by considering the actual learning as expressed in tests of cognitive skills, on which...

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...

Critics of international student comparisons argue that results may be influenced by differences in the extent to which countries adequately sample their entire student populations. In this research note, we show that larger exclusion and non-response rates are related to better country average...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on...

This paper examines the relationship between pay inequality, economic growth, and performance in Korea. Pay inequality is estimated by using Theil's index to identify the factors determining the level of pay inequality, and establish its relationship with economic growth and performance. For the...

The direct impact of local public goods on welfare is relatively easy to measure from land rents. However, the indirect effects on home and job location, on land use, and on agglomeration benefits are hard to pin down. We develop a spatial general equilibrium model for the valuation of these...

In spite of widespread acclaims of social audits as low-cost and powerful participatory tools that can bolster awareness and improve public service delivery, a key policy question is what such audits have achieved so far. Using a unique panel data set assembled from official social audit...

We analyze voluntary private contributions to public goods and the role seed money plays in signaling the public good's quality to potential subsequent contributors. We present a theoretical model and analyze two sets of naturally occurring data from crowd-funding platforms. After developing the...

Denmark has drawn much attention for its active labor market policies, but is almost unique in offering a voluntary public unemployment insurance program requiring a significant premium payment. A safety net program – a less generous, means-tested social assistance plan – completes the...

We use data for 436 rural districts from the 2001 Census of India to examine whether different aspects of social divisions help explain the wide variation in access to tap water across rural India. Studies linking social fragmentation to public goods usually aggregate different types of...