Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Acronyms and Abbreviations -- Preface -- Labor Supply, Employment, and Unemployment in the Egyptian Economy, 1988- 2006 -- The Fall and Rise of Earnings and Inequality in Egypt: New Evidence from the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey 2006...

Microcredit programs are of great interest to economists and policymakers because of their potential for reducing poverty, particularly among women. The first chapter mainly investigates the effectiveness aspect of microcredit programs. Using program evaluation methods, we find significant...

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the relationship between fertility rates and the economy in Venezuela. In particular, it looks at the extreme fluctuations in oil revenues, Venezuelaâs main source of income, in the 1970s and their impact on fertility. It uses the 1998 National...

This dissertation consists of three essays. In the first one (Chapter three), âGains and Losses from Household Formation,â I introduce a general equilibrium model, wherein a household may consist of more than one member, each with their own preferences and endowments. In these models at first,...

Land-clearing fires set by settlers in the Brazilian Amazon give rise to large scale wildfires that threaten mature forests, agricultural plantations, and settlement areas. Our purpose is to examine labor devoted to fire prevention (firebreak establishment) and burning for crop production for...

Chapter 1 introduces some of the issues which are addressed in the other chapters of this dissertation. These topics include: (1) the general equilibrium incentives in the provision of public education, (2) human capital production functions in economic modeling, (3) how public education...

This dissertation consists of three chapters on development economics. The first two chapters are in the area of international macroeconomics. The third chapter is in an area that is the intersection of macroeconomics and population economics. The first chapter studies currency substitution in...

The unequal distribution of gains from technology between favorable and unfavorable rice environments in Asia can widen if future transgenic rice varieties cannot be adopted in less favored regions. This study investigates the potential economic impacts of three transgenic rice technologies:...

This dissertation is a collection of three empirical essays on Albania andIran. In December of 1990, the communist system in Albania came to an abruptend. The collapse of communism led to a number of macroeconomic reforms that,among other things, brought dramatic changes in the Albanian labor...

The first part of this dissertation investigates the possibility of an output cut by a firm as a result of an increase in demand in industries with constrained capacities. We are specially interested in the crude oil industry, although thepaper has implications beyond that market. Two simple...