Public employment grew surprisingly fast in Russia during the 1990s, at a time when total employment was falling. Most of this growth occurred in the country's 89 regions, and rates varied among them. This paper seeks to explain this variation. Using panel data for 78 regions over 1992-1998 we...

Using longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we examine how individual wages change in line with the share of college graduates in a given province. The individual fixed effect model shows that the external returns to education in China appear to be zero. We estimate an...

We exploit time and spatial variation generated by the commodities boom to measure the effect of natural resources on human capital formation in Peru, a country with low governance indicators. Combining test scores from over two million students and district-level administrative data on mining...

This paper analyzes the interaction between migration of high-skilled labor and publicly financed investment. We develop a theoretical model with multiple, ex ante identical jurisdictions where individuals decide on education and subsequent emigration. Migration decisions are based on...

The expansion of access to publicly provided pre-kindergarten bundles together redistribution to the poor with an early human capital investment. Financing publicly provided pre-K investment is mainly a state and local issue. Which voters favor local pre-K expansion? This paper uses several new...

We investigate the effects of the Indonesian decentralization and democratization process on budget allocation at the sub-national level. Based on panel data for 271 Indonesian districts for the years of 1994 to 2009, we address the determinants of local investment expenditures in public...

This paper explores the long run relationship between public and private investment in the euro area in terms of capital stocks and gross investment flows. Panel techniques ac-counting for international spillovers are employed. While private and public capital stocks are cointegrated, the...

Numeracy skills of adults within and across 12 different countries in 2011 are strongly associated with the accumulated public investments in education received by these adults during their schooling. This paper confirms existing evidence that the timing of educational investments is important,...