This paper presents a capability-augmented model of on the job search, in which sweatshop conditions stifle the capability of the working poor to search for a job while on the job. The augmented setting unveils a sweatshop equilibrium in an otherwise archetypal Burdett-Mortensen economy, and...

The academic literature on equality of opportunity has burgeoned. The concepts and measures have begun to be used by policy institutions, including in specific sectors such as health and education. It is argued that one advantage of focusing on equality of opportunity is that policy makers are...

August 1995 - In urban areas of Côte d'Ivoire, human capital is the endowment that best explains welfare changes over time. In rural areas, physical capital - especially the amount of land and farm equipment owned - matters most. Empirical investigations of poverty in developing countries tend...

We consider the case in which the opening up of an economy to migration results in departure of skilled workers. We point out that while the possibility of migration changes the set of employment opportunities, it also affects the structure of incentives: Higher returns to skills in the foreign...

Why do some countries establish their own national eco-labeling programs and some do not? In this paper, we provide both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence suggesting that the answer to this question can shed new light on three questions that have taken center-stage in the trade and...

For decades, rapid urban expansion has led to concerns over the loss of cultivated land in rural China. This contrasts sharply with another salient feature of the Chinese land policy reform landscape that has gone on largely unnoticed - the addition of newly cultivated land in China through land...

Fixed-term contract employment has increasingly replaced regular open-ended employment as the predominant form of employment notably in developing countries. Guided by factory-level evidence showing nuanced patterns of co-movements of regular and contract wages, we propose a two-tiered task...