We document a large decrease in earnings inequality in Brazil between 1996 and 2012.Using administrative linked employer-employee data, we fit high-dimensional worker and firm fixed effects models to understand the sources of this decrease. Firm effects account for40 percent of the total...

A key feature of developing economies is that wages in agriculture are significantlybelow those of other sectors. Using Brazilian household surveys and administrativepanel data, I use information on workers who switch sectors to decompose the driversof this gap. I find that most of the gap is...

We document that past highly inflationary episodes are often characterized by a steeper inflationslack relationship. We show that model-generated data from a standard small Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model can replicate this empirical finding when estimated with different...

Wage-differentials by education of men and women are examined from African household surveys to suggest private wage returns to schooling. It is commonly asserted that returns are highest at primary school levels and decrease at secondary and postsecondary levels, whereas private returns in six...

Despite the lower quality of education provided Africans compared with whites in South Africa, the percentage wage gains associated with additional years of primary, secondary, and higher education are substantially larger for Africans than for whites in 1993, and they increase for both race...

This paper assesses the empirical relationship between the liberalization of international trade and the economic status of women. Although historically globalization is not generally linked to the advancement of women, several recent country studies find export led growth in middle and low...

The study of labor market segmentation and the estimation of the deadweight loss due to policy distortions reflected in wage structures require analyses of labor force surveys. These data are increasingly available in most countries. But evaluations of labor market reforms are uncommon. The lack...

This paper reviews the methods and empirical findings from economic analyses of women's contribution to social welfare and the determinants of their human capital. To understand better women's roles in agricultural households, three themes have gained prominence in the economics literature....

A large share of cross-country differences in productivity is explained by differences in agricultural productivity. Using a combination of sub-national agricultural statistics and geospatial datasets on crop-specific potential yields, we study the main drivers of this variation from a...

The variance in the logarithms of per capita GDP in purchasing-power-parity prices increased prices increased in the world from 1960 to 1968 and decreased since the mid 1970s. In the later period the convergence in intercountry incomes more than offset any increase in within country inequality....