In 2005, Portugal introduced a business registration reform - the On the Spot Firm program - with the goal of promoting the establishment of new start-ups and, ultimately, stimulating investment and economic growth. However, the question remains as to whether this policy has successfully...

We provide a new approach for assessing the cost of marginal ecosystem changes and theeffectiveness of green payment schemes. The approach is based on a theoretical and empirical analysis of the bio-economic production interactions between marketed outputs and non-marketed ecosystemservices at...

This dissertation consists of three essays whose unifying topical theme is the study and application of semiparametric methods for the evaluation of social programs. The first essay evaluates the federal urban Empowerment Zone (EZ) program using an inverse probability weighting (IPW)...

We provide a new approach for assessing the cost of marginal ecosystem changes and the effectiveness of green payment schemes. The approach is based on a theoretical and empirical analysis of the bio-economic production interactions between marketed outputs and non-marketed ecosystem services at...

Este artículo aborda la siguiente pregunta: ¿cuál habría sido el PIB per cápita del área del euro si no se hubiese creado la unión monetaria? Para intentar contestarla, utilizamos la metodología de control sintético [Abadie y Gardeázabal (2003) y Abadie et al. (2010)]. Nuestros...

In Chapter 2, "Accounting for Cross-Country Differences in Intergenerational Earnings Persistence: The Impact of Taxation and Public Education Expenditure," I study the determinants of cross-country differences in intergenerational earnings persistence between fathers and sons. Western economies...

This paper explores the interaction between the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the cost-of-living faced by single mothers. After the 1993 EITC expansion, we identify up to a 10 percentage point increase in labor force participation for single mothers in the lowest cost areas but no...

This paper generalizes the standard model of how taxes affect the labor-leisure choice by allowing individuals to change both their labor supply and avoidance effort in response to tax changes. Doing so reveals that the income and substitution effect of taxes depend on both preferences and the...

An executive's firm-specific human capital is argued to be a critical resource to the executive's current organization, but because of its lack of transferability, is of little value outside the firm. We argue that there exists a form of firm-based knowledge, which we term firm-explicit human...

Since the 1990s, the effective global labor supply has increased strongly, in particular due to the integration of China and India into the global markets. This rise has also deteriorated the situation of low-skilled workers in advanced economies. This development raises important challenges for...