Existing studies on single-sex schooling suffer from biases because students who attend single-sex schools differ in unmeasured ways from those who do not. In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools based on an algorithm allowing one to address self-selection bias and...

Using exogenous secondary school assignments to remove self-selection bias to schools and peers within schools, I credibly estimate both (1) the effect of attending schools with higher-achieving peers, and (2) the direct effect of short-run peer quality improvements within schools, on the same...

To explore whether schools' causal impacts on test-scores measure their overall impact on students, we exploit quasi-random school assignments and data from Trinidad and Tobago to estimate the causal impacts of individual schools on several outcomes. Schools' impacts on high-stakes tests are...

In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools after fifth grade based on achievement tests, leading to large differences in the school environments to which students of differing initial levels of achievement are exposed. Using both a regression discontinuity design and...

We assess the extent to which a country's external capital structure can aid in mitigating the macroeconomic impact of oil price shocks. We study two Caribbean economies highly vulnerable to oil price shocks, an oil-importer (Jamaica) and an oil-exporter (Trinidad and Tobago). From a...

This paper treats programs in which firms voluntarily agree to meet environmental standards as "green clubs": clubs, because they provide non-rival but excludable reputation benefits to participating firms; green, because they also generate environmental public goods. The model illuminates a...

There are two commonly accepted views about command-and-control (CAC) environmental regulation. First, CAC delivers environmental outcomes at very high cost. Second, in a developing country with weak regulatory institutions, CACs may not even yield environmental benefits: regulators can force...

This paper examines the effect of stringent environmental regulations on firms' environmental practices, economic performance, and environmental innovation. Reducing COD levels by 10% relative to 2005 levels is an aim of the Chinese 11th Five-Year Plan. Using a difference-in-differences...

Does the impact of environmental regulation differ by plant vintage and technology? We answer this question using annual Census Bureau information on 116 pulp and paper mills' vintage, technology, productivity, and pollution abatement operating costs for 1979-1990. We find a significant negative...

This paper explores abatement investment and location responses to environmental policy, which takes the form of emission taxes or tradeable emission permits and subsidies against the costs of abatement investment, under uncertainty and irreversibility. Uncertainty is associated with output...