We examine the impact of the 2004 Indian tsunami on international remittance transfers using aggregate country data and synthetic control methodology. This procedure implies identifying the causal impact of the disaster by comparing the share of remittances to GDP in Indonesia, the country most...

This paper aims to understand how corruption responds to financial incentives and, in particular, it is an attempt to identify the causal impact of a wage loss on the prevalence of corruption in the education sector. Specifically, we exploit the unexpected wage cut in May 2010 that affected all...

We use household survey data and a unique census of institutionalized children to analyze the impact of abortion legalization in Romania. We exploit the lift of the abortion ban in December 1989, when communist dictator Ceausescu and his regime were removed from power, to understand its impact...

In many developing and transitional countries, inter-household transfers in general and gifts in particular are sizable and very important. We use unique Romanian data that enables us, contrary to most previous studies, to isolate pure gifts from other kinds of private transfers and to study...

This paper study the income of Swedish households belonging to the baby boom generation, i.e those born in the 1940-50. An international comparison as well as an historical presentation of income patterns is given. However, the main purpose is to generate the future income of the baby boom...

Roma, Europe’s largest minority, face poverty, social exclusion and life-long inequalities, despite the intensified efforts to alleviate their plight. Surprisingly, despite substantial funding aimed at improving Roma outcomes, there is a very little evidence on the effectiveness of these...

We investigate the efficiency and distributional consequences of a corruptionfighting initiative in Romania targeting the endemic fraud in a high-stakes high school exit exam, which introduced CCTV monitoring of the exam and credible punishment threats. We find that punishment coupled with...

Using a unique data set on immigrants living in France in 2003, we investigate whether Muslims invest differently in their children’s education compared to non-Muslims. In particular, we want to assess whether educational inequalities between the children of Muslim and non-Muslim immigrants...

We investigate the effects on health at birth of a shock generated by a major (25%) and unexpected wage cut austerity measure that affected all public sector employees in Romania in 2010. Our findings suggest an overall improvement in health at birth for boys exposed to the shock in early...