This paper investigates whether poor employment prospects of potential insurgents help to fuel conflict. The paper provides a new test of this "opportunity cost mechanism" using one of the largest shocks to labor demand in agricultural societies: harvest. Theoretically, the paper shows that...

Over the last two decades, Mexico has experienced macroeconomic stability, an open trade regime, and substantial progress in education. Yet average workers' earnings have stagnated, and earnings of those with higher schooling have fallen, compressing the earnings distribution and lowering the...

This analysis assesses the role of skills, human capital endowment, and migration as determinants of Sub-Saharan Africa's participation in manufacturing global value chains. Due to lack of reliable data on skilled labor, skilled and unskilled labor contents in exports were generated from the...