By the 2008/09 school year the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) abolished binding school catchment areas (SCAs) in all municipalities. The reform has been controversial and it was feared that school choice would increase ethnic segregation. Using data on all primary schools, we...

The East Asian miracle was real. Prior to the 1997 economic and currency crises, Asian NICs Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan achieved remarkable annual GDP growth. In these countries the overall economic performance was significantly determined by the industrial development triggered by...

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...

This paper examines whether the federal structure of aid-receiving countries matters in explaining aid effectiveness. Following the decentralization theorem, the devolution of powers should increase aid effectiveness, since local decision-makers are better informed about local needs. At the same...

Institutions are important for proper economic performance, but are replaceable by trust or other social norms. We show that when proper institutions and trust are missing, integrity of the individuals can replace them. We construct a model of a transactions-based economy with contracts...

We explore the relationships between subjective well-being and income, as seen across individuals within a given country, between countries in a given year, and as a country grows through time. We show that richer individuals in a given country are more satisfied with their lives than are poorer...

The paper studies the revenue, efficiency, and distributional implications of a simple strategy of offsetting tariff reductions with increases in destination-based consumption taxes so as to leave consumer prices unchanged. We employ a dynamic micro-founded macroeconomic model of a small open...