As international economic integration has progressed, policy makers have started to ponder the possible conflicts arising from nationally pursued competition policies in more unified goods markets. An idea underlying much of this discussion is the notion that international trade liberalisation,...

The authors measure the responsiveness of returns to capital invested in six U.S. industries to shocks to the prices of competing import goods. Unanticipated, positive shocks to import prices cause higher than normal stock-market returns in all six industries. The magnitudes of these responses...

The authors demonstrate how to estimate a model of oligopoly pricing when products are multidimensionally differentiated. They provide an empirical counterpart to recent theoretical work on product differentiation. Using specifications informed by economic theory, the authors estimate price-cost...

We evaluate the impact of the Gambian hardship allowance, which provides a salary premium of 30-40% to primary school teachers in remote locations, on student performance. A geographic discontinuity in the policy's implementation provides identifying variation. We find no effects of the hardship...

As an alternative to traditional academic schooling, vocational schooling in South Africa may serve as a safety valve for students encountering difficulty in the transition from school to work. Yet if ineffective, vocational schooling could also be a sinkhole, offering little chance for success...

Persistently high youth unemployment is one of the most pressing problems in South Africa. We prospectively analyze an employer wage subsidy targeted at youth, a policy recently enacted by the South African government to address the issue. Recognizing that a credible estimate of the policy's...

We provide the first evidence on the causal effect of border enforcement on the full spatial distribution of Mexican immigrants to the United States. We address the endogeneity of border enforcement with an instrumental variables strategy based on administrative delays in budgetary allocations...