I examine how student allocation rules impact achievement of students of different ability and socio- economic background. When the assignment rule shifts from exam to district based, a model illustrates that income relative to ability becomes a stronger predictor of student achievement and...

We use an agent-based computational approach to show how inflation can worsen macroeconomic performance by disrupting the mechanism of exchange in a decentralized market economy. We find that, in our model economy, increasing the trend rate of inflation above 3 percent has a substantial...

This research advances and empirically establishes the hypothesis that, in the course of the prehistoric exodus of Homo sapiens out of Africa, variation in migratory distance to various settlements across the globe affected genetic diversity and has had a persistent hump-shaped effect on...

This paper demonstrates that the composition of a country's exports is an important driver of educational attainment. Using detailed trade data and a gravity-based IV technique, we identify the causal impact of changes in the pattern of a country's exports on subsequent educational attainment....

This paper examines the impact of corruption on the self-selection of firms into domestic and export markets. A heterogeneous firm model predicts that corruption decreases the probability that a firm only sells domestically, increases the probability that a firm exports indirectly through an...

Prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) interventions reduce the cumulative probability of transmission from a HIV positive woman to her child by as much as 40 percentage points. This paper is the first economic analysis of the behavioral effects of PMTCT. I examine fertility...

This paper examines how the outflow of remittances affects the wages of native workers. The model shows that the wage impact of immigration depends on the competing effects of an increase in labor market competition and an increase in the consumer base. Immigrant remittances provide a unique way...

A frequently cited argument against the use of market-based instruments to provide public goods is that they diminish our sense of responsibility to be good citizens. In this paper, we report on the results of a laboratory experiment designed to explore the idea that this distrust stems from the...

This paper revisits the relationship between interest rates and house prices. Surveying a number of recent studies and bringing to bear some new evidence on the question, this paper argues that in the data, the impact of interest rates on house prices appears to be quite modest. Specifically,...