This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in...

This paper derives original series of average years of schooling in the United States 1870-1930, which take into account the impact of mass migrations on the US educational level. We reconstruct the foreign-born US population by age and by country of origin, while combining data on the flow of...

Using micro data on more than 130,000 individuals from 69 countries, we analyze the extent to which joblessness of the individuals and the prevailing unemployment rate in the country impact perceptions of the effectiveness of democracy. We find that personal joblessness experience translates...

Drawing on the labour-augmented K+S agent-based model, this paper develops a two-country North-South ABM wherein the leader and the laggard country interact through the international trade of capital goods. The model aims to address sources of asymmetries and possible converge patterns between...

We explore the effects of decentralization on education and health in Ethiopia using an original database covering all of the country's regions and woredas (local governments). Ethiopia is a remarkable case in which war, famine and chaos in the 1970s-80s were followed by federalization,...

This study uses a large-scale dataset from Vietnam to analyze the impacts of parental absence due to migration, death, or divorce on children's school enrollment, for children aged from 7 to 22. We find children from two-parent families have a better chance of enrolling at all levels of...

Drawing on the labour-augmented K+S agent-based model, this paper develops a two-country North-South ABM wherein the leader and the laggard country interact through the international trade of capital goods. The model aims to address sources of asymmetries and possible converge patterns between...

Endogenous time discounting is introduced in a two-period human-capital-driven growth model: subjective discount rate depends upon the level of human capital. This assumption accords strongly with the micro-level evidence. In the model an individual optimizes consumption over two periods. Low...

Most empirical investigations of the effects of cognitive skills assume that they are produced by schooling. Drawing on longitudinal data to estimate production functions for adult verbal and nonverbal cognitive skills, we find that: (1) School attainment has a significant and substantial effect...

This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in...