In this paper we do a couple of things: discussing a way to measure the welfare cost of country risk, and measuring it for Argentina in the period 1875-2006. There are two conclusions: a) the welfare cost of Argentine risk has been huge: for example, in the period 1976-2006 it was around 20% of...

The armed conflict over economic and political power in Colombia has led to the massive displacement of people living in the areas of violence. The design of appropriate policies of prevention, assistance, and resettlement requires improved information on the determinants and effects of...

We propose a new microeconomic explanation for the divergent experiences of economies in forming human capital. We suggest that the positive effect of a longer life expectancy on human capital formation arises from two separate effects: a life expectancy effect and a prolonged intergenerational...

This paper attempts to assess three main issues on Peruvian telecommunications technology: what are the main variables that explain the demand for access to telephone services; how important is access to telephone services in explaining the transition out of poverty, and what are the consumption...

This paper develops a one sector, two-input model with endogenous human capital formation. The two inputs are two types of skilled labor: engineering, which exerts a positive externality on total factor productivity, and law, which does not. The paper shows that a marginal prospect of migration...

This paper develops a model of voluntary migration into degrading work. The essence of the model is a tension between two bads that which arises from being relatively deprived at home, and that which arises from engaging in humiliating work away from home. Balancing between these two bads can...

This peper anlyzes the impact of tax competition between two countries of un- equal per-capita capital endownments on tax rates and efficiency when distorting wage, residence-based and source-based capital taxes (or any combination of two instruments) are available for governments. The national...

Models of international tax competition typically assume the existence of a benevolent government. This paper presents a model which integrates the view of government as source of inefficiency with an analysis of distorting taxes on capital investment, savings and labor income in a common...