This paper constructs a cross-country measure of the quality of education using a novel approach based on international test scores data. The first main finding is that there are large differences in education quality – one year of schooling in the U.S. is equivalent to three or more years of...

This paper uses unique high-frequency data on prices of two agricultural goods to examine the additional costs incurred in cross-border trade between Niger and Nigeria, as well as trade between ethnically distinct markets within Niger. We find a sharp and significant conditional price change of...

We explore education's role in improving the allocation of labor between China's agricultural and nonagricultural sectors and measure the portion of China's recent growth attributable to this channel. Using detailed micro-level data and an empirical model that allows for the endogenous selection...

How much would output increase if underdeveloped economies were to increase their levels of schooling? We contribute to the development accounting literature by describing a nonparametric upper bound on the increase in output that can be generated by more schooling. The advantage of our approach...

Despite strong recent economic growth, gender inequality remains a major concern for India. This paper examines the effectiveness of a public policy geared towards the reduction of gender inequality. The national Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (PNDT) Act of 1994, implemented...

Rural areas often have more than one regime of property rights and production. Large, private-property farms owned by powerful landowners coexist with subsistence peasants who farm small plots with limited property rights. At the same time, there is broad consensus that individual,...

We examine the causal impact of the 2002–2007 civil conflict in Côte d'Ivoire on children's health using household surveys collected before, during, and after the conflict, and information on the exact location and date of conflict events. Our identification strategy relies on exploiting both...

Big Push models suggest that local product demand can create multiple labor market equilibria: one featuring high wages, formalization, and high demand and one with low wages, informality, and low demand. I demonstrate that minimum wages may coordinate development at the high wage equilibrium....

Based on two extensions, this paper proposes a re-appraisal of the concept of the pollution terms of trade (PTT) introduced by Antweiler (1996). First, detailed data allows capturing the effect of differences in emission intensities across countries and over time. Second, relying on Johnson and...

In this paper, we develop a theoretical model of household production, bargaining and credit to analyse how access to microcredit affects intra-household decision-making and welfare, and identify conditions under which female household members are most likely to benefit. We show that, consistent...