In a canonical model of collective action, individual contribution to collective action is negatively correlated with group size. Yet, empirical evidence on the group size effect has been mixed, partly due to heterogeneities in group activities. In this paper, we first construct a simple model...

This article investigates how community management of schools can affect educational outcomes as measured by retention rates. In our model, parents make decisions about whether or not their children should remain in school, and they monitor the performance of the teachers. We analyze a unique...

This paper explores how migration to local towns, big cities, and overseas has halted the transmission of poverty from parents to children in rural Philippines. Parents’ income has come mainly from agricultural sources while children’s income has come largely from nonfarm sources. Initially,...

We quantify the ‘permanent’ socio-economic impacts of the Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake in 1995 by employing a large-scale panel data set of 1,719 wards from Japan over three decades. In order to overcome a fundamental difficulty of identifying the counterfactual, i.e., the Kobe...

This paper develops a model for joint liability borrowings that facilitates credit market transactions ex ante, but may induce the borrower's suicide ex post through the stigma associated with default. A Japanese suicide survey provides some supportive evidence.

An endogenous growth model has been developed that extends Sidrauski (1967), Roubini and Sala-i-Martin (1992,1995) and Lucas (1988) by combining financial development, human capital investment, and external openness. Financial development and trade liberalization are shown to increase the...

This paper aims to investigate the demand-side factors affecting the schooling progression of Filipino children of school age, using household panel data collected over a span of 17 years. The following patterns emerge: (1) daughters complete more years of schooling than sons; (2) parental...

This research explores the changing structure of the rural economy in the Philippines from 1988 to 2006. We found that the expansion and upgrade of infrastructure such as electricity and roads and investment in secondary and tertiary education are important factors that induced the economic...

In this paper, we estimate wage returns to investment in education for persons with disabilities in Nepal, using information on the timing of being impaired during school-age years as identifying instrumental variables for years of schooling. We employ unique data collected from persons with...