Conscription was an obvious topic for economists to study during the heyday of the Vietnam war but, as the US draft threat has receded, so has the literature. One area where conscription remains important however is in the developing world, in particular, Latin America. Here the military...

A recent paper by Bedi and Gaston, in estimating the returns to endogenous education in Honduras, examined the determinants of educational attainment through the use of official government statistics. This letter seeks to corroborate their findings using independently collected data and a wider...

William Easterly, an ex-World Bank economist and widely respected growth theorist, in recently noting that skilled individuals may elect to pursue occupations that redistribute income rather than enhance growth, referred to 'the somewhat whimsical piece of evidence … that economies with lots...