Prior to the introduction of mother tongue based education in 1994, the language of instruction for most subjects in Ethiopia's primary schools was the official language (Amharic) - the mother tongue of only one third of the population. This paper uses the variation in individual's exposure to...

Prior to the introduction of mother tongue-based education in 1994, the language of instruction for most subjects in Ethiopia's primary schools was the official language (Amharic) - the mother tongue of only one third of the population. This paper uses the variation in individual's exposure to...

Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic...

This paper is the first to estimate a causal effect of immigrant students' reading performance on their math performance. To overcome endogeneity issues due to unobserved ability, we apply an IV approach exploiting variation in age-at-arrival and the linguistic distance between origin and...

We study the effects of performance bonuses in immigrant language training for adults. A Swedish policy pilot conducted in 2009 - 2010 gave a randomly assigned group of municipalities the right to grant substantial cash bonuses to recently arrived migrants. The results suggest substantial...

We study the effects of performance bonuses in immigrant language training for adults. A Swedish policy pilot conducted in 2009-2010 gave a randomly assigned group of municipalities the right to grant substantial cash bonuses to recently arrived migrants. The results suggest substantial effects...

This paper is the first to estimate a causal effect of immigrant students' reading performance on their math performance. To overcome endogeneity issues due to unobserved ability, we apply an IV approach exploiting variation in age-at-arrival and the linguistic distance between origin and...

We study the effects of performance bonuses in immigrant language training for adults. A Swedish policy pilot conducted in 2009-2010 gave a randomly assigned group of municipalities the right to grant substantial cash bonuses to recently arrived migrants. The results suggest substantial effects...

The incidence of young Latino children obesity is a public health concern. Among 5-year-olds, 16% of Latinos are obese compared with 10% of whites. Obesity disparities between non-Latino white and Latino children increase significantly with age. The purpose of this study is to examine the...

Languages differ in the degree to which they employ gender distinctions for nouns and pronouns. Speaking a more gendered language may highlight gender in the mind of the speaker, leading to more pronounced gender roles, and is associated with lower female labor force participation rates, earlier...