This paper employs the Ordinary Least Squares, Instrumental Variables and Treatment Effect models to a new dataset from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) to estimate return to four-year university education in 2008. Our estimates reveal that income premium of four-year university education is about 97 percent above that of high school education, and robust to the various est...

This paper measures excess labor supply in equilibrium. We induce hiring shocks—which employ 24 percent of the force external month-long jobs—in Indian local markets. In peak months, wages increase instantaneously and aggregate employment declines. lean consistent with severe rationing, are unchanged, positive spillovers on remaining workers, indicating that over a quarter is rationed. At least...

I analyze how two reforms, introduced to expand college access in Brazil, impacted enrollments of low-SES students. The first policy centralized applications a nationwide platform (SISU), and the second expanded affirmative action quotas (AA) uniform share 50 percent vacancies offered by degree. Results show that SISU changes enrollment decisions high-SES students, crowding out groups from leas...

This paper reports on a two-tiered experiment designed to separately identify the selection and effort margins of pay for performance (P4P). At recruitment stage, teacher labor markets were randomly assigned “pay-for-percentile” or fixed-wage contract. Once recruits placed, an unexpected, incentive-compatible, school-level re-randomization was performed so that some teachers who applied contrac...

In 2012, Brazilian public universities were mandated to use affirmative action policies for candidates from racial and income minorities. We show that the policy makes students’ status a strategic choice may reject high-achieving minority students while admitting low-achieving majority students. Empirical data shows evidence consistent with this type of unfairness in more than 49 percent progra...

We consider a Rebelo (1991) type model of endogenous growth in which the environmental quality positively affects the rate of human capital accumulation and the environmental quality itself is positively affected by human capital accumulation and is negatively affected by physical capital accumulation. We analyse the effects of taxation on the steady state equilibrium growth rate in this model....

We develop a horizontal R&D growth model that allows us to investigate the different channels through which financial reforms affect investment and patent activity. First, “micro” reform abolishes barriers entry in banking sector produces straightforward result: decrease lending rates stimulates economic growth. Second, “macro” removes restrictions on banks’ reserves credit controls. While this...

This paper examines retirement behaviour and household income for older persons in Chile. It pays close attention to the sources of household income, income inequalities, and the economic vulnerability of older persons. This is important in order to evaluate whether labour market and social security reform in Latin America will improve the welfare of older groups, and especially their vulnerabi...

We study the effect of political ideology on sustainable development, measured as investment in genuine wealth, in a dynamic panel of 79 countries between 1981 and 2013. We find that a switch from a left-wing or centrist government to a right-wing government has a robust positive and statistically significant effect on investment in genuine wealth. We find no evidence of opportunistic cycles in...

We study whether and how peer referrals increase screening, testing, identification of patients with tuberculosis, an infectious disease responsible for over one million deaths annually. In experiment 3,176 at 122 tuberculosis treatment centers in India, we find that small financial incentives raise the probability existing refer prospective screening resulting cost-effective new cases. Incenti...