Mobility within the European Union (EU) brings great opportunities and large overall benefits. Economically stagnant areas, however, may be deprived of talent through emigration, which may harm dynamism and delay political, and economic, change. A significant episode of emigration took place...

Recent evaluations of traditional microfinance loans have found no significant impacts on borrower incomes or productive activities. We examine whether this can be remedied by (a) modifying loan features to facilitate financing of working capital needs of farmers, and (b) delegating selection of...

We build a novel stochastic dynamic regional integrated assessment model (IAM) of the climate and economic system including a number of important climate science elements that are missing in most IAMs. These elements are spatial heat transport from the Equator to the Poles, sea level rise,...

Evidence on the implementation of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act suggests that the available work is often rationed by local leaders in poor areas, and that this is an important factor limiting the scheme's impact on poverty. The paper offers explanations for this empirical...

Rural to urban migration is an integral part of the development process, but there is little evidence on how out-migration transforms rural labor markets. Emigration could benefit landless village residents by reducing labor competition, or conversely, reduce productivity if skilled workers...

India started the implementation of a rural public works program in 2006, covering all districts of the country within three years. The program quarantees 100 days of employment per year at minimum wage to each rural household on demand, with the goal of reducing joblessness and poverty. We...

We present results from a large-scale randomized experiment across 350 schools in Tanzania that studied the impact of providing schools with (a) unconditional grants, (b) teacher incentives based on student performance, and (c) both of the above. After two years, we find (a) no impact on student...

This paper documents industrial output and labor productivity growth around the poor periphery 1870-1940 (Latin America, the European periphery, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia). Intensive and extensive industrial growth accelerated there over these seven critical...

This paper documents industrial output growth around the poor periphery (Latin America, the European periphery, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa) between 1870 and 2007. We find that although the roots of rapid peripheral industrialization stretch into the late 19th...

This paper explores the geographic overlap of trade and technology shocks across local labor markets in the United States. Regional exposure to technological change, as measured by specialization in routine task-intensive production and clerical occupations, is largely uncorrelated with regional...