Using cross-country data for about 70 countries and regional data for about 180 African provinces, we show that competition between Protestant and Catholic missionaries increased schooling in former colonies. Our evidence implies that Protestant missionaries increased schooling in Catholic...

Using regional data for about 180 African provinces, we find that measures of Protestant missionary activity in the past are more correlated with schooling variables today than similar measures for Catholic missionary activity, as previous papers have suggested. However, we find that this effect...

The evaluation of public policies is on the heart of the e cient management of public resources. As complex as it generally is, any reform should be assessed on its ability to achieve its preconceived goals. This research paper attempts to show the importance of the design of a public policy's...

We study the consumption and hedging strategy of an oil-importing developing country that faces multiple crude oil shocks. In our model, developing countries have two particular characteristics: their economies are mainly driven by natural resources and their technologies are less e cient in...

We document the properties of business cycles using the dating algorithm by Harding andPagan (2002) on a quarterly database for 58 countries —21 industrial countries and 37 emerging market economies (EMEs)— from 1970q1 to 2007q4. We find that: (a) recessions are deeper, steeper and costlier...

Public schools in Chile receive a per-student subsidy depending on enrollment, and are managed by local governments that operate under soft budget constraints. In this paper, we study the effects of this system on per-student expenditures. Per-student expenditures on rural areas are 30% higher...

This paper estimates the demand curves faced individually by each pension fund management firm that serves compulsory saving for old age in Chile, in 1993-2002. These firms –Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones, AFP- sell their services by retail methods, contacting each client separately....

The recovery of the Asia-Pacific from the global economic crisis of 2008-09 is underway but incomplete. Despite encouraging progress, major risks remain, ranging from slow growth and persistent unemployment to reemerging global imbalances and renewed financial volatility. The policies that...

We use a general equilibrium model of a monetary economy to understand the economics behind the correlation between in nation and oil futures returns. Oil is used as both, an input to the production of capital and as a consumption good. We estimate our model using maximum likelihood with the...

The evolution of the skill premium (i.e., the wage di erential between skilled and unskilled workers) has interest from at least two perspectives: it is a rough measure of inequality among workers of di erent quali cations and provides information on the characteristics of the development...