Small businesses are seen as an agent of economic growth in developing countries. Recently, the idea of micro-lending has received increased attention due to its promising effects on employment and personal economic growth in rural developing areas. However, we lack an in depth understanding of...

In this piece, I take issue with one of the fundamental tenets of law and economics as it has been used to justify gender discrimination in the pricing of life insurance and annuities, namely, that individuals should bear their own identifiable costs so as to avoid misallocation of society's...

We use a sample of over 80,000 Spanish companies started by a sole entrepreneur between 2004 and 2014, and distinguish between male and female entrepreneurs demand for credit, credit approval ratio, and credit performance. We fi nd that female entrepreneurs who start a business are less likely...

“Diversity” has become one of the most commonly used words by U.S. corporations.Indeed, many companies claim that they have spent millions, sometimes billions ofdollars to create an egalitarian workplace for all workers. Given the amount of moneyspent and the increased amount of research...

This thesis is comprised of three chapters. The first chapter develops a statistical model that enriches the role that firms playin wage determination, allowing firms to influence both average wages as well as the returns to observable worker characteristics. I exploit the hierarchical nature of...

This paper examines the changes in relative earnings of workers with different education levels during Vietnam’s transition. It is found that females enjoy a higher return to education than males do in 1998, reversing the situation observed five years ago. A large fall in the returns to...

Economics

We study changes in the wage structures in nine EU countries over 1995-2002 and the role of demand, supply and institutional developments in shaping these changes. Using comparable cross-country microeconomic data, we compute for each country and at each decile of the wage distribution, the part...

A pesar de una rápida disminución del desempleo, los salarios reales en España apenas aumentaron durante el periodo 1995-2006. Una posible explicación de este comportamiento se refiere a la importancia de los efectos composición derivados de algunos cambios estructurales, tales como el...