We analyze the role of risk-sharing institutions in transitions to modern economies. Transitions requires individual-level risk-taking in pursuing productivity-enhancing activities including using and developing new knowledge. Individual-level, idiosyncratic risk implies that distinct...

We analyze persistence in marijuana consumption utilizing data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97). We allow for three sources of persistence: pure state dependence, time invariant unobserved heterogeneity and persistence in idiosyncratic, time-varying...

This paper examines the effects of increasing marginal tax rates on labour supply in a setting in which workers may hold two jobs and may be constrained in their weekly hours on their main jobs. A panel data, multi-equation labour supply model is estimated with correction for tax system...

What is the future of international migration flows? The growing availability of bilateral international migration data has resulted in an improved understanding of the determinants of migration flows through the estimation of theory-based gravity models. However, the use of these models as a...

Existing growth research provides little explanation for the very large differences in long-run growth performance across OECD countries. We show that cognitive skills can account for growth differences within the OECD, whereas a range of economic institutions and quantitative measures of...

This paper provides estimates of the economic impact of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in China and India for the period 2012-2030. Our estimates are derived using WHO's EPIC model of economic growth, which focuses on the negative effects of NCDs on labor supply and capital accumulation. We...

Many literatures investigate the causal impact of income on economic outcomes, for example in the context of intergenerational transmission or well-being and health. Some studies have proposed to use employer wage differentials and in particular industry affiliation as an instrument for income....

Prediction Markets, sometimes referred to as "information markets", "idea futures" or "event futures", are markets where participants trade contracts whose payoffs are tied to a future event, thereby yielding prices that can be interpreted as market-aggregated forecasts. This article summarizes...