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...

Is natural resource abundance a blessing or a curse for a country? An important concern is the possibility that resource booms reduce human capital accumulation. These booms favor low-skill jobs, which increases the opportunity cost of education making it optimal for some cohorts to interrupt...

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 examines the potential impacts of East-West migration of talents on the innovative capital and hence the long-run growth prospects in Eastern sending countries. Complementing previous studies, we examine the impact of high skill migration not only on the formation of human capital,...

This paper addresses the question of how traditional institutions interact with the forces of globalization to shape the economic mobility and welfare of particular groups of individuals in the new economy. We explore the role of one such traditional institution--the caste system--in shaping...

This paper examines the short and long-term impact of international migration on overall human capital formation as well as the quality of human capital formation of the left behind households in the community of origin. Exploiting a unique migration policy, we find that the time passed since...

While the literature has documented negative effects of conflict on educational outcomes, there is little evidence on the effect of conflict termination. We show how the permanent ceasefire declared by FARC's insurgency during peace negotiations with the Colombian government caused a...

A consensus has been forged in the last decade that recent periods of sustained growth in total factor productivity and reduced poverty are closely associated with improvements in a population's child nutrition, adult health, and schooling, particularly in low-income countries. Estimates of the...

A consensus has been forged in the last decade that recent periods of sustained growth in total factor productivity and reduced poverty are closely associated with improvements in a population's child nutrition, adult health, and schooling, particularly in low-income countries. Estimates of the...

We study the impact of global expansions in mobile internet access between 2000 and 2018 on student outcomes. We link geospatial data on the rollout of 3G mobile technology with over 2.5 million student test scores from 82 countries. Our findings indicate that the introduction of 3G coverage...