Student attendance is both a critical input and intermediate output of the education production function. However, the malleable classroom-level determinants of student attendance are poorly understood. We estimate the causal effect of class size and observable teacher qualifications on student...

In the neoclassical production functions model technical change (TC) is assumed to be exogenous and it is specified as a function of time. However, some exogenous external factors other than time can also affect the rate of TC. In this paper we model TC via a combination of time trend (purely...

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disadvantaged children. We estimate production functions for cognitive and socio-emotional skills as a function of...

The accumulation principle suggests that complementarity between capital and labor forces the labor income share to rise in the presence of capital accumulation. The CES model estimates using data from 20 Japanese industries between 1970 and 2012 explain the same outcome but with substitutable...

The role of capital accumulation as a driver of the labor income share requires capital and labor to be substitutes, which appears paradoxical in a world predominantly characterized by complementarity between capital and labor. This paper argues that the composition of skills in the labor force...

Katz and Rapoport (2005) conclude that with linear production technology and the possibility of unilateral migration, region-specific shocks may increase the average level of education. Previously, Poutvaara (2000) derived a corresponding result with Cobb-Douglas technology and migration which...

This note provides a useful property of the Allen-Uzawa partials for the translog cost function. It also suggests how the main results extend to any functional form with certain properties. The curvature of the Allen-Uzawa matrix is the same as the curvature of the Hessian matrix. Intuitively...

In this paper, we describe a novel iterative procedure called SISTA to learn the underlying cost in optimal transport problems. SISTA is a hybrid between two classical methods, coordinate descent ("S"-inkhorn) and proximal gradient descent ("ISTA"). It alternates between a phase of exact...

We use a behavioural microsimulation model embedded in a numerical optimization procedure in order to identify optimal (social welfare maximizing) tax-transfer rules. We consider the class of tax-transfer rules consisting of a universal basic income and a tax defined by a 4th degree polynomial....