According to an influential theoretical argument, presidential systems tend to present smaller governments because the separation between those who decide the size of the fiscal purse and those who allocate it creates incentives for lower public expenditures. In practice, forms of government...

This paper attempts to establish a formal relationship between innovation and productivity using Colombian firm-level data. It is found that the production of goods and services new to the firm and to the domestic market enhances firms' sales per worker, and innovation that results in...

The paper uses microeconomic data to characterize entrepreneurs by income group and selected household, individual and business characteristics, finding that entrepreneurship is rare but more frequent in the upper class than the middle or lower classes. Middle-class entrepreneurs are, on...

The objective of this paper is to examine the changes and dynamics of household structure, human capital and the returns to education, labor earnings, women's labor force participation and investment in human capital. The approach used in the analysis is the so-called "cohort technique," which...

The literature on taxes and public finance generally focuses on revenues, an easily observable and generally available variable, as the observable measure of tax policy. Still, revenues depend on many determinants other than the political will and policy objectives of the government. It is...

This paper uses a natural policy experiment to estimate how changes in the costs of engaging in criminal activity may influence adolescents' decisions in crime participation and school attendance. The study finds that, after an exogenous decrease in the severity of judicial punishment imposed on...