This paper uses a local average treatment effect (LATE) framework in an attempt to disentangle the separate effects of criminal and noncriminal gun prevalence on violence rates. We first show that a number of previous studies have failed to properly address the problems of endogeneity, proxy...

We study the intergenerational effects of maternal education on children's cognitive achievement, behavioral problems, grade repetition and obesity. We address endogeneity of maternal schooling by instrumenting with variation in schooling costs when the mother grew up. Using matched data from...

This paper provides new evidence on the nature of occupational differences in unemployment dynamics, which is relevant for the debate between the structural or hysteresis hypotheses. We develop a procedure that permits us to test for the presence of a structural break at unknown date. Our...

It is generally believed that the structural reforms that usher in competition and force companies to become more efficient were introduced later in India following the macroeconomic crisis in 1991. However, whether the post-1991 growth is an outcome of more efficient use of resources or greater...

The Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) interpretation of the IV estimates of the returns to schooling is becoming increasingly popular. Typically, researchers reporting LATE estimates do not provide systematic evidence that there is substantial heterogeneity across different ability levels in...

We characterize the bias of propensity score based estimators of common average treatment effect parameters in the case of selection on unobservables. We then propose a new minimum biased estimator of the average treatment effect. We assess the finite sample performance of our estimator using...

More able parents tend to have more able children. While few would question the validity of this statement, there is little large-scale evidence on the intergenerational transmission of IQ scores. Using a larger and more comprehensive dataset than previous work, we are able to estimate the...

We analyse a three-year panel data set of Russian firms spanning from 2000 to 2002 and we investigate the effect of regional institutional and economic factors on entry rates across time, industries and regions. The paper builds on a novel database and exploits inter-regional variation in a...

Based on a theoretical framework on informal, custodial and non-custodial sentencing, the paper provides econometric tests on the effectiveness of police, public prosecution and courts. Using a unique dataset covering German states for the period 19772001, a comprehensive system of criminal...