Many Colombians are confronted with the ongoing conflict that influences their decision making in everyday life, including their behavior in labor markets. This study focuses on the impact of violent conflict on self-employment, enlarging the usual determinants with a set of conflict variables. In order to estimate the effect of conflict on self-employment, we employ fixed effects estimation. T...

This paper documents a significant impact of climate variation on urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily in arid countries. By lowering farm incomes, reduced moisture availability encourages migration to nearby cities, while wetter conditions slow it. The paper also provides evidence for ruralurban linkages. In countries where cities are starting to develop an industrial base, reduced mo...

A nearly monomineralic 1.5 m thick bentonite bed sampled in Melo (Uruguay) appears to be a pure high-charge montmorillonite: [Si3.94 Al0.06] (Al1.40 Fe0.11 Ti0.02 Mg0.49 Mn0.01) O10 (OH)2 Na0.01 K0.08 Ca0.18. However, contrasting swelling behaviors have been evidenced by fitting the experimental X-ray diffraction patterns recorded on oriented preparations of the same sample in different saturat...

The paper develops an economic–political model to explain why the convergence hypothesis fails even though good economic policies seem to be a sufficient condition for strong economic growth (Sachs, J., Warner, A., 1995a. Economic convergence and economic policies. NBER Working Paper No. 5039. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.). The model has three variables: growth, policy, ...

Does Education Matter for Economic Growth? Empirical growth regressions typically include mean years of schooling as a proxy for human capital. However, empirical research often finds that the sign and significance of schooling depends on the sample of observations or the specification of the model. We use a nonparametric local-linear regression estimator and a nonparametric variable relevance ...

Attention to the quality of human capital in different countries naturally leads to concerns about how school policies relate to student performance. The data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) provide a way of comparing performance in different schooling systems. The results of analyses of educational production functions within a range of developed and developi...

This paper provides a theory of the interactions between democratization and the emergence of rule of law. Heterogeneous individuals can make costly investments in protection against expropriation by others and the state. The public enforcement of property rights, whose cost depends on these investments, is chosen by the politically enfranchised population. We characterize the dynamic evolution...

Explanations of economic growth and prosperity commonly identify a unique causal effect, e.g., institutions, culture, human capital, geography. In this paper we provide instead a theoretical modeling of the interaction between culture and institutions and their effects on economic activity. We characterize conditions on the socio-economic environment such that culture and institutions complemen...

Cohort Size and Youth Employment Outcomes This paper utilizes a cross-country panel of 83 developing countries to examine how changes in cohort size are correlated with subsequent employment outcomes for workers at different ages. The results depend on countries’ level of development. In low-income countries, young adults that are born into smaller cohorts are less likely to work, but school at...

A compilation of Fe-bearing chlorite analyses is used: (1) to investigate the Alfree di-trioctahedral (AFDT) substitution 2Fe +□ = 3(Mg,Fe) in chlorite; and (2) to estimate the composition of a ferri-sudoite end-member (Si3Al)[(Fe ,Mg)2Fe 3+ 2 □Al]O10(OH)8 within the chlorite solid-solution domain. According to our observations, up to two Fe cations might be allocated in the M2-M3 chlorite site...