Using Integrated Household Survey data from Georgia, we measure the observable and discriminatory ethnic wage gap, among male and female workers, and the gender wage gap, among Georgians and non-Georgians. The gender wage discrimination is larger than the ethnic wage discrimination. In the...

This paper reviews the main features of the banking and financial sector in ten new EU members, and then examines the relationship between financial development and economic growth in these countries by estimating a dynamic panel model over the period 1994-2007. The evidence suggests that the...

We investigate whether a causal interpretation of the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth is appropriate and whether cross-country evidence supports a case for the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking...

This paper examines the causality relationship between immigration, unemployment and economic growth of the host country. We employ the bootstrap panel Granger causality testing approach of Kónya (2006) that allows to test for causality on each individual country separably by accounting for...

This paper analyzes the causal relationships between marriage and subjective well-being in a longitudinal data set spanning 17 years. We find evidence that happier singles opt more likely for marriage and that there are large differences in the benefits from marriage between couples. Potential,...

Researchers are often interested in estimating the causal effect of some treatment on individual criminality. For example, two recent relatively prominent papers have attempted to estimate the respective direct effects of marriage and gang participation on individual criminal activity. One...

Many empirical studies specify outcomes as a linear function of endogenous regressors when conducting instrumental variable (IV) estimation. We show that tests for treatment effects, selection bias, and treatment effect heterogeneity are biased if the true relationship is non-linear. These...

We examine instrumental variables estimation in situations where the instrument is only observed for a sub-sample, which is fairly common in empirical research. Typically, researchers simply limit the analysis to the sub-sample where the instrument is non-missing. We show that when the...

In many economic contexts, an elusive variable of interest is the agent's expectation about relevant events, e.g. about other agents' behavior. Recent experimental studies as well as surveys have asked participants to state their beliefs explicitly, but little is known about the causal relation...

Education policy-makers and practitioners want to know which policies and practices can best achieve their goals. But research that can inform evidence-based policy often requires complex methods to distinguish causation from accidental association. Avoiding econometric jargon and technical...