This paper uses individual-level data and a differences in differences estimation strategy to test whether the education gender gap of Muslims is different from that of Christians. In particular, the paper uses data for young Lebanese and shows that, other things equal, girls (both Muslim and...

This paper uses a new dataset to reassess the relationship between bank ownership and bank performance, providing separate estimations for developing and industrial countries. It finds that state-owned banks located in developing countries tend to have lower profitability and higher costs than...

Inflation can "grease" the wheels of the labor market by relaxing downward wage rigidity but it can also increase uncertainty and have a negative "sand" effect. This paper studies the grease effect of inflation by looking at whether the interaction between inflation and labor market regulations...

This paper uses a new dataset on the composition of public debt in developing and emerging market countries to look at the correlation between country characteristics and domestic debt share. While the paper finds that most variables have the expected sign, it also finds that country...

This paper synthesizes previous studies analyzing the effects of capital account liberalization on industry growth while controlling for financial crises, domestic financial development and the strength of institutions. We find reasonably strong evidence that financial openness has positive...

This paper checks whether state-ownership of banks is correlated with lending behavior over the business cycle and finds that their lending is less responsive to macroeconomic shocks than the lending of private banks.

This paper looks at how the interaction between democracy and education affects the quality of government. It models an economy in which politicians of heterogeneous quality can run for office and shows that education has a positive effect on the quality of selected officials only if democratic...

This paper uses an instrumental variable approach to study whether public debt has a causal effect on economic growth in a sample of OECD countries. The results are consistent with the existing literature that has found a negative correlation between debt and growth. However, the link between...