We present a theoretical framework which allows for the comparison of the effectiveness of tax measures, loans and funding, in supporting industry-oriented research. We estimate for each of the instruments the exact contribution required by a firm to decide on investing in R&D, given the costs...

This paper explores how a conditional cash transfer program influences students’ schooling decisions when program payments stop in the middle of the school career. To that end, I examine Mexico’s Progresa, which covered students only until the end of middle school (at age 15) in its early...

In practice, social and development interventions are often targeted at groups or individuals with the largest expected benefits. In such cases, treatment effects are usually affected by selection on unobservable factors. We show that modeling the process of selective intervention placement...

We use data on a large-scale water and sanitation program in rural Mozambique, implemented between 2008 and 2013, to investigate the complementarities between a behavior-change-based community-led total sanitation intervention and a community water supply intervention. Our findings indicate that...

A new and rapidly growing econometric literature is making advances in the problem of using machine learning (ML) methods for causal inference questions. Yet, the empirical economics literature has not started to fully exploit the strengths of these modern methods. We revisit influential...

The econometrics literature proposed several new causal machine learning methods (CML) in the past few years. These methods harness the strength of machine learning methods to flexibly model the relationship between the treatment, outcome and confounders, while providing valid inferential...

Public benefit-cost analysis of market policies often relies on a particular definition of market surplus that adds up consumer and producer surplus and external costs. This paper provides an overview of conceptual strategies to deal with moral considerations and then develops an adjusted market...

We use data on a large-scale water and sanitation program in rural Mozambique, implemented between 2008 and 2013, to investigate the complementarities between a behavior-change-based community-led total sanitation intervention and a community water supply intervention. Our findings indicate that...

Despite the mixed empirical evidence, many economists stillhold to the view that Internet will promote competition betweenfirms,thereby lowering prices and increasing economic welfare. This paperpresents a search model that provides a different view. We analyzethemarket for a homogeneous good...

We present an oligopoly model where a certain fraction of consumers engage in costly non-sequential search to discover prices. There are three distinct price dispersed equilibria characterized by low, moderate and high search intensity, respectively. We show that the effects of an increase in...