Is a school's impact on high-stakes test scores a good measure of its overall impact on students? Do parents value school impacts on tests, longer-run outcomes, or both? To answer the first question, we exploit quasi-random school assignments and data from Trinidad and Tobago. We construct...

Existing studies on single-sex schooling suffer from biases because students who attend single-sex schools differ in unmeasured ways from those who do not. In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools based on an algorithm allowing one to address self-selection bias and...

Using exogenous secondary school assignments to remove self-selection bias to schools and peers within schools, I credibly estimate both (1) the effect of attending schools with higher-achieving peers, and (2) the direct effect of short-run peer quality improvements within schools, on the same...

We assess the extent to which a country's external capital structure can aid in mitigating the macroeconomic impact of oil price shocks. We study two Caribbean economies highly vulnerable to oil price shocks, an oil-importer (Jamaica) and an oil-exporter (Trinidad and Tobago). From a...

In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools after fifth grade based on achievement tests, leading to large differences in the school environments to which students of differing initial levels of achievement are exposed. Using both a regression discontinuity design and...

Does the impact of environmental regulation differ by plant vintage and technology? We answer this question using annual Census Bureau information on 116 pulp and paper mills' vintage, technology, productivity, and pollution abatement operating costs for 1979-1990. We find a significant negative...

Much of the potential impact of environmental policy is though to come from the incentives it gives firms to develop and introduce new environmental products and processes. Almost all the literature on this issue has focused on the impact of environmental policy on the amount environmental R&D...

This paper explores abatement investment and location responses to environmental policy, which takes the form of emission taxes or tradeable emission permits and subsidies against the costs of abatement investment, under uncertainty and irreversibility. Uncertainty is associated with output...

This paper examines the effect of stringent environmental regulations on firms' environmental practices, economic performance, and environmental innovation. Reducing COD levels by 10% relative to 2005 levels is an aim of the Chinese 11th Five-Year Plan. Using a difference-in-differences...

This paper treats programs in which firms voluntarily agree to meet environmental standards as "green clubs": clubs, because they provide non-rival but excludable reputation benefits to participating firms; green, because they also generate environmental public goods. The model illuminates a...