This paper examines the role of the Indian diaspora in the outsourcing of work to India. The data are taken from oDesk, the world's largest online platform for outsourced contracts. Despite oDesk minimizing many of the frictions that diaspora connections have traditionally overcome, diaspora...

This paper examines how temporary migration to a different ethnic region affects national integration. It uses original survey data from individuals who were randomly exposed to different ethnic regions of Nigeria during their mandatory national service, the largest program of its kind in...

This paper studies the impact of gender and ethnicity on educational outcomes using cross-country evidence from Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. It uses the Minnesota Population Center's Integrated Public Use Microdata Series-International database, which includes...

This paper reviews the existing literature on the impact of migrants networks on the patterns of international migration. It covers the theoretical channels at stake in the global effect of the networks. It identifies the key issues, namely the impact on size, selection and concentration of the...

Much of the research on ethnicity, development and conflict implicitly assumes that ethnic groups act collectively in pursuit of their interests. Collective political action is typically facilitated by political parties able to make credible commitments to pursue group interests. Other work,...

The authors compare the welfare effects of in situ slum upgrading programs with programs that provide slum dwellers with better housing in a new location. Evaluating the welfare effects of slum upgrading and resettlement programs requires estimating models of residential location choice, in...

This paper examines how the dismantling of coercive institutions associated with the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994 affected the distribution of rents from natural resource exports. It identifies the interplay between coercive institutions and natural resource rents as an important...

This paper analyzes the effects of land market restrictions on structural change from agriculture to non-farm in a rural economy. This paper develops a theoretical model that focuses on higher migration costs due to restrictions on alienability, and identifies the possibility of a reverse...

This paper offers the first evidence on the prevalence of a central actor in modern growth theory?the engineer. Using newly collected sub-national, and international data as well as historical case studies, it then argues that differences in innovative capacity, captured by the density of...

Word searches of Google's library of digitized books suggest that there have been two "Poverty Enlightenments" since 1700, one near the end of the 18th century and the second near the end of the 20th. The historical literature suggests that only the second came with a widespread belief that...