Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) have been shown to increase human capital investments, but their standard features make them expensive. We use a large randomized experiment in Morocco to estimate an alternative government-run program, a "labeled cash transfer" (LCT): a small cash transfer made...

Standard models of investment predict that credit-constrained firms should grow rapidly when given additional capital, and that how this capital is provided should not affect decisions to invest in the business or consume the capital. The authors randomly gave cash and in-kind grants to male-...

Individual-level census and household survey data are used to present a rich profile of young developing country international migrants around the world. They are found to comprise a large share of the flow of migrants, particularly among migrants to other developing countries, with the age...

This paper presents a new approach to the old problem of linear dependency of age, cohort and time effects. It is shown that second differences of the effects can be estimated without any normalization restrictions, providing information on the shape of the age-, cohort- and time-effect...

The degree of mobility in incomes is often seen as an important measure of the equality of opportunity in a society and of the flexibility and freedom of its labor market. But estimation of mobility using panel data is biased by the presence of measurement error and non-random attrition from the...

Consumption and income have both grown rapidly in Taiwan over the past forty years, with younger birth cohorts experiencing faster growth. The long upward trend in consumption presents a strong challenge to the consumption smoothing predictions of the Permanent Income Hypothesis. We investigate...

There is a proliferation of economics blogs, with increasing numbers of economists attracting large numbers of readers, yet little is known about the impact of this new medium. Using a variety of experimental and non-experimental techniques, we try to quantify some of their effects. First, links...

Both cross-sectional regression and panel data methods of growth convergence estimation are used to determine the impact of various forms of capital controls on economic growth and growth convergence. We suggest a method to control for measurement error in the cross-sectional regressions based...

Household expenditure surveys are used to examine the effects of the Mexican peso crisis on household consumption. The main smoothing mechanism was a change in the composition of consumption, with households reducing semidurable spending to maintain basic food levels. This article provides a...

The ENIGH household surveys are used to investigate the strength of the precautionary motive in Mexico, using pseudo-panel methods to obtain estimates of the coefficient of relative prudence for Mexican consumers. The method provided accounts for the aggregation problems arising from...