To study whether current spending levels and public knowledge of them contribute to transatlantic differences in policy preferences, we implement parallel survey experiments in Germany and the United States. In both countries, support for increased education spending and teacher salaries falls...

This paper provides a synthesis of the four papers on the Latin American and Caribbean economies: Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. It focuses on the following themes: macroeconomic stabilization and fiscal challenges, poverty and inequality, and the use of natural resources...

Researchers have linked sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) poor growth performance in recent decades to several factors, including geography, institutions, and low returns to investment. This literature has not yet integrated the research that identifies linkages between gender, economic development,...

States' fiscal capacity plays a pivotal role in developing economies, but it is less clear what its determinants are or what explains cross-country differences. We focus on the impact of natural resources. Standard arguments suggest that natural resources rents may reduce incentives to invest in...

Economic development in Latin America has trailed most other world regions over the past four decades despite its relatively high initial development and school attainment levels. This puzzle can be resolved by considering the actual learning as expressed in tests of cognitive skills, on which...

Expanded international data from the PIAAC survey of adult skills allow us to analyze potential sources of the cross-country variation of comparably estimated labor-market returns to skills in a more diverse set of 32 countries. Returns to skills are systematically larger in countries that have...

Does fiscal decentralization in a politically decentralized less developed country help strengthen democratic institutions at the grass root level? And is the impact of such decentralization on local politics important in determining local development? Our study on Indonesia suggests that fiscal...

This paper presents an empirical examination of economic and institutional development. Utilizing a novel data set on American Indian tribal nations, we investigate how constitutional design affects economic development, while holding the broader legal and political environment fixed....

Although formal education is often considered an indicator of political leaders' quality, the evidence on the effectiveness of educated leaders is mixed. Besides, minimum education qualifications are increasingly being used as requirements for contesting elections, making it critical to...

Cross-country differences of market hours in 17 OECD countries are mainly due to the hours of women, especially low-skilled women. This paper develops a model to account for the gender-skill differences in market hours across countries. The model explains a substantial fraction of the...