Critics of international student comparisons argue that results may be influenced by differences in the extent to which countries adequately sample their entire student populations. In this research note, we show that larger exclusion and non-response rates are related to better country average...

Thanks to extraordinary and exponential improvements in data storage and computing capacities, it is now possible to collect, manage, and analyze data in magnitudes and in manners that would have been inconceivable just a short time ago. As the world has developed this remarkable capacity to...

Despite its high relevance to current policy debates, estimating the causal effect of Information Communication Technology (ICT) investment on educational standards remains fraught with difficulties. In this paper, we exploit a change in the rules governing ICT funding across different school...

This paper develops a long run growth model for a major oil exporting economy and derives conditions under which oil revenues are likely to have a lasting impact. This approach contrasts with the standard literature on the "Dutch disease" and the "resource curse", which primarily focus on short...

In line with the neoclassical growth model a persistent stream of oil revenues might have a long lasting impact on GDP per capita in oil exporting countries through higher investment activities. This relationship is explored for Iran and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) using...

Despite the remarkable increase in women's education levels and the rapid fall of their fertility rate in Iran, female labor force participation (FLFP) has remained low. Using the instrumental variable method, this paper estimates the causal impact of number of children on mothers' participation...

Iran has the world's only government-regulated kidney market. We report the results of the first field study of donor behaviour in this unusual market. Participants have lower risk tolerance and higher patience levels than the Iranian average but display no difference in rationality from...

This paper investigates the effect of economic sanctions on employment. We exploit the imposition of a series of unexpected and unprecedented international economic sanctions on Iran in 2012 and estimate the short-run effects of the change in import exposure on manufacturing employment at the...

We use statewide administrative data from Florida to estimate the impact of attending public schools with different grade configurations on student achievement through grade 10. Based on an instrumental variable estimation strategy, we find that students moving from elementary to middle school...

Decentralization of decision-making is among the most intriguing recent school reforms, in part because countries went in opposite directions over the past decade and because prior evidence is inconclusive. We suggest that autonomy may be conducive to student achievement in well-developed...