Teacher quality is crucial to deliver good education. However, improving teacher quality in developing countries can be a tough problem. This paper investigates the impact of a teacher placement program that sends college graduates with a strong academic track record to teach in rural primary...

When analysing any social phenomenon, encounters among different social science disciplines and fields of investigation dispersed over time and space may well produce illusory rapprochements. Such encounters nevertheless have great potential for producing truly common knowledge. In matters of...

Compared with the period 1920-1990, the current monetary policy implementation techniques are relatively well-focused and transparent. In particular, (i) they mostly aim at achieving a well defined operational target (typically the overnight interest rate), (ii) monetary policy operations are...

In this paper I analyze the work on exchange rates and external imbalances by University of Chicago faculty members during the university's first hundred years, 1892-1992. Many people associate Chicago's views with Milton Friedman's advocacy for flexible exchange rates. But, of course, there was...

A vast literature has emerged using Taylor rules to analyze monetary policy Although very attractive both theoretically and empirically such rules imply a mechanical response by the policy variable to fundamental ones This study looks for empirical evidence of a more sophisticated monetary...

The paper shows that there is a substantial degree of heterogeneity in the ability of Fed watchers to forecast US monetary policy decisions. Based on a novel database for 268 professional forecasters since 1999, the average forecast error of FOMC decisions varies 5 to 10 basis points between the...

This paper uses a factor-augmented vector autoregressive model (FAVAR) estimated on U.S. data in order to analyze monetary transmission via private sector balance sheets, credit risk spreads and asset markets in an integrated setup and to explore the role of monetary policy in the three...

Liquidity plays an important role in explaining how banks determine their allocation of funds. This paper analyses whether this fact can explain the term structure of interest rates and yield spreads. The paper models banks' demand for liquidity in a manner similar to that used to study...