In a model that is consistent with the existence of a home bias and with foreign investors that are less informed than domestic investors, we show that unexpectedly high worldwide returns lead to net equity inflows into small countries. In addition, a small country experiences net equity inflows...

This chapter studies the differential effects that trade openness may have on leading and lagging regions within a country. Examining data from India, we find that while trade liberalization is associated with reduced poverty, this effect is smaller in lagging states. The expected transmission...

This paper is the first systematic attempt to measure the existence and degree of dowry inflation in South Asia. The popular press and scholarly literature have assumed dowry inflation in South Asia for some time, and there are now a number of theoretical papers that have attempted to explain...

That unmarried individuals die at a faster rate than married individuals at all ages is well documented. Unmarried women in developing countries face particularly severe vulnerabilities, so that excess mortality faced by the unmarried is more extreme for women in these regions compared to...

Using data from South Asia, this paper examines how arranged marriage cultivates rivalry among sisters. During marriage search, parents with multiple daughters reduce the reservation quality for an older daughter's groom, rushing her marriage to allow sufficient time to marry off her younger...

Growth has accelerated in a wide range of developing countries over the last couple of decades, resulting in an extraordinary period of convergence with the advanced economies. We analyze this experience from the lens of structural change - the reallocation of labor from low- to...

The Tiebout hypothesis, which states that individuals will costlessly sort themselves across local communities according to their public good preferences, is the workhorse of the local public finance literature. This paper develops a test of the Tiebout hypothesis using historical variation in...

This paper presents a multi-district model that can be calibrated to data reflecting housing market conditions, public school finance mechanisms and private school markets. Simulations are undertaken to investigate the impact of private school vouchers. Households that differ in both their...

Recent years have seen an unprecedented growth and geographic dispersion in international student mobility. In this paper, we empirically test the predictions of two competing theoretical models underpinning the determinants of student mobility - the human capital model and the migration model -...

This study quantifies the effect of state reopening policies on daily mobility, travel, and mixing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. We harness cell device signal data to examine the effects of the timing and pace of reopening plans in different states. We quantify the increase in mobility...