The paper addresses the linkage between certain aspects of the increasing economic integration of world markets and the level of child labour. We empirically examine, first, the often-cited conventional wisdom that multinational enterprises invest in countries where the extent of child labour is relatively high and, second, the concern that countries may gain an unfair comparative advantage in ...

We study how social networks change as a result of an exogenous expansion in formal financial access and show how to estimate the effects of these changes on household outcomes. We use a unique household panel dataset that contains detailed information on the network of informal financial transactions before and after a field experiment that randomized access to savings accounts in Nepal. First...

Immigrant Networks and the Take-Up of Disability Programs: Evidence from US Census Data This paper examines the role of ethnic networks in disability program take-up among working-age immigrants in the United States. We find that even when controlling for country of origin and area of residence fixed effects, immigrants residing amidst a large number of co-ethnics are more likely to receive dis...

Do Peers Affect Student Achievement? Evidence from Canada Using Group Size Variation We provide the first empirical application of a new approach proposed by Lee (2007) to estimate peer effects in a linear-in-means model. This approach allows to control for grouplevel unobservables and to solve the reflection problem. We investigate peer effects in student achievement in Mathematics, Science, F...

This paper provides a systematic analysis of identification in linear social interactions models. This is both a theoretical and an econometric exercise as the analysis is linked to a rigorously delineated model of interdependent decisions. We develop an incomplete information game that describes individual choices in the presence of social interactions. The equilibrium strategy profiles are li...

A Caseworker Like Me: Does the Similarity between Unemployed and Caseworker Increase Job Placements? This paper examines whether the chances of job placements improve if unemployed persons are counselled by caseworkers who belong to the same social group, defined by gender, age, education, and nationality. Based on an unusually informative dataset, which links Swiss unemployed to their casework...

This paper uses the adaptive Lasso estimator to determine variables important for economic growth. The adaptive Lasso estimator is a computationally very efficient procedure that simultaneously performs model selection and parameter estimation. The computational cost of this method is negligibly small compared with standard approaches in the growth regressions literature. We apply this method f...

This study proposes a new measure and test of herding which is based on the crosssectional dispersion of factor sensitivity of assets within a given market. This new measure enables us to evaluate the directions towards which the market may be herding and separate these from movements in fundamentals. We apply the test to an analysis of the US, UK, and South Korean stock markets and somewhat su...