We develop a new methodology for quantifying the tasks undertaken within occupations using 3,000 verbs from around 12,000 occupational descriptions in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOTs).  Using micro-data from the United States from 1880-2000, we find an increase in the employment...

In 2003 Kenya abolished user fees in all government primary schools. We find that this Free Primary Education (FPE) policy resulted in a decline in public school quality and increased demand for private schooling.  However, the former did not reflect a decline in value added by public schools -...

Poverty has halved in Ghana over the period from 1991 to 2005.  Our objective in this paper is to assess how far this fall was linked to the creation of better paying jobs and the increase in education.  We find that earnings rose rapidly in the period from 1998 to 2005, by 64% for men and by...

The underlying motivations for envy or related social preferences and their impact on agricultural innovations are examined by combining data from money burning experimental game and household survey from Ethiopia.  In the first stage of the money burning experimental game, income inequality is...

In Ghana there is a highly developed apprenticeship system where young men and women undertake sector-specific private training, which yields skills used primarily in the informal sector.  In this paper we use a 2006 urban based household survey with detailed questions on the background,...

There is an implicit consensus that 1930s exchange-rate regimes can be characterised as some variant of 'floating'.  This paper applies an adaptation of modern methodologies of exchange-rate regime classification to a panel of 47 countries in weekly observations between January 1919 and August...

Consider a finite data set of price vectors and consumption bundles; under what conditions will there be a weakly separable utlity function that rationalizes the data?  This paper shows that rationalization in this sense is possible if and only if there exists a preference order on some finite...

This is an attempt to view the relationships involving education and income as forming a system, and one that can generate a poverty trap.  The setting is rural China, and the data are from a national household survey for 2002, designed with research hypotheses in mind.  Enrolment is high in...

We consider selecting an econometric model when there is uncertainty over both the choice of variables and the occurrence and timing of multiple location shifts.  The theory of general-to-simple (Gets) selection is outlined and its efficacy demonstrated in a new set of simulation experiments...

The introduction of Basel II has raised concerns about the potential impact of risk-sensitive capital requirements on the business cycle.  Several approaches have been proposed to assess the procyclicality issue.  In this paper, we adopt a general equilibrium model and conduct comprehensive...