We apply theories of capital market failure to ana1yzeoptima1 financing of risky higher education. In the market solution,students can only finance their education through debt. There isunderinvestment in human capita1, because some students with socia1lyprofitable investments in human capita1...

This discussion paper resulted in an article in the <I>Journal of Development Economics</I> (2013). Volume 103, pages 43-51.<P> To raise school attendance, many programs in developing countries eliminate orreduce private contributions to education. This paper documents an unintendednegative effect of such...</p></i>

This paper presents evidence about the impact on school enrollment of a program in Ecuador that gives cash transfers to the 40 percent poorest families. The evaluation design consists of a randomized experiment for families around the first quintile of the poverty index and of a regression...

This paper examines the effect of a housing assistance program on school enrollment, child labor and poverty reduction among poor families in Ecuador. Administrative data is merged to a household panel to link the history of a voucher application with socioeconomic information. Two empirical...

We argue that promoting education may be a means to reduceincome inequality. When workers of different skill levels areimperfect substitutes in production, an increase in the level ofhuman capital in the economy reduces the return to education.Hence, a given compression of after-tax incomes can...

The paper studies the effects of cross-country differences in the productionprocess of human capital on income distribution and growth. Our overlapping gen-erations economy has the following features: (1) consumers are heterogenous withrespect to parental human capital and wealth; (2)...

The paper examines the effect of heterogeneity in individual human capital formation on cross-country income inequality. It considers a two-country model of overlapping generation heterogeneous economies with the following features: (1) individuals are heterogeneous with respect to inborn...

College education is not only an investment; for many people it also generates consumption benefits. If these benefits are normal goods, then the rich attend college at higher rates than the poor. Furthermore, the marginal poor student is smarter than the marginal rich student. Colleges aiming...

We adopt a structural time series analysis to investigate the impact of parole abolition and sentence reform in Virginia on reported crime rates. The Commonwealth of Virginia abolished parole and reformed sentencing for all felony offences committed on or after January 1, 1995. To examine the...

This discussion paper led to a publication in <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775711001427">'Economics of Education Review'</A>, 31(1), 33-44.<p>Policies need not only to be well designed to effectively address market failures, but their parameters also need to be part of agents’ information sets. This is illustrated by government student loans...</p></a>