This paper examines the causal effect of local government spending on labor markets in a developing country. We use plausibly exogenous variation in the allocation mechanism of federal funds at the municipality level in Brazil to estimate the effect of general spending on formal employment. We...

We examine the effects of college costs on the labor supply of mothers. Exploiting changes in college costs after the roll-out of nine generous state merit aid programs from 1993 to 2004, we analyze the difference in the labor supply of mothers before and after these programs were implemented....

Canonical models of crime emphasize economic incentives. Yet, causal evidence of sorting into criminal occupations in response to individual-level variation in incentives is limited. We link administrative socioeconomic microdata with the universe of arrests in Medellín over a decade. We...