"Empirical evidence suggests that the higher-order effects of natural disasters, which affect intangible assets, may be even more important than the material inter-industry effects. However, most existing general equilibrium models ignore higher order effects concerning human capital. Moreover,...

This paper examines the links between adverse events, depression, and decision making in Nigeria. It investigates how events such as conflicts, shocks, and deaths can affect short-term perceptions of welfare, as well as longer term decisions on economic activities and human capital investments....

Mexico's conditional cash transfer program, PROSPERA, has demonstrated short- and medium-term positive effects on health and education, including: increased children's height; decreased risky behaviors among adolescents, including the postponement of parenthood; and increased years of schooling....

In many low-income countries, teachers do not master the subject they are teaching, and children learn little while attending school. Using unique data from nationally representative surveys of schools in seven Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper proposes a methodology to assess the effect...

Students around the world are going to school but are not learning -- an emerging gap in human capital formation. To understand this gap, this paper introduces a new data set measuring learning in 164 countries and territories. The data cover 98 percent of the world's population from 2000 to...

This paper compiles project-level data from the World Bank's lending history to describe patterns and the composition of its portfolio. The paper focuses particularly on the effect of countries' transition from International Development Association to International Bank for Reconstruction and...

In this paper the authors estimate the rate of return to firm investments in human capital in the form of formal job training. They use a panel of large firms with unusually detailed information on the duration of training, the direct costs of training, and several firm characteristics such as...