Economics

ABSTRACT Recent evidence suggests that exposure to a larger share of Limited English (LE) students is associated with a slight decline in performance for students at the top of the achievement distribution. In this paper we explore whether LE peer effects differ by gender and race. Utilizing school-by-year fixed effect methods that allow us to address possible endogeneity with respect to the schools students attend, we find evidence of heterogeneous peer effects of LE students on natives. Specifically, we find no LE student peer effects on females' achievement in math and reading but significant negative effects on males and black students.

Syllabus for a four-week interdisciplinary course designed by Timothy Lubin and Shikha Silwal taught in Kathmandu/Lalitpur in 2017 and planned again for 2019.  (It was first offered on campus at Washington and Lee University after the 2015 earthquake prevented travel to Nepal.)

Course Theme:
Social stratification touches every aspect of life, and South Asia’s traditional caste structure is a special case: this highly complex, strictly adhered to system has been religiously legitimized and criticized over a 3000-year history, and is nowadays seen as being at odds with the modern world.  Yet it remains a crucial factor in social identity, economic roles, legal status, and religious practice.  These four interlocking factors, considered both historically and in practice today in Nepal, will each be the subject of a unit in this 360º survey of caste.  Guest speakers and experience “on the ground” will enhance the program. 

A largely rural country with a population mostly of Hindus and Buddhists (including many Tibetan refugees), Nepal has undergone some major changes in its recent history.  After emerging from a decade of civil war in 2006, the country abolished its 239-year-old monarchy in 2008, and a new constitution is currently being formulated.  Amidst all these changes, issues related to caste are central and timely.

Abstract:  Though recently challenged, the dual economy view has affected development economics and development policy, either explicitly or implicitly, for more than half a century. According to this view, agriculture merely serves to build the industrial sector — in particular, agriculture has no role as an engine of growth in the long term. Examining agriculture, industry and service sector growth in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Zimbabwe over more than three decades, we find little empirical support for this view. On the contrary, our analyses find a large degree of interdependence in long-run sectoral growth, implying that the sectors ‘grow together’ or, similarly, that there are externalities or spillovers between sectors. Policy implications are also discussed; these include directing more attention towards the interdependencies in sectoral growth broadly defined. In particular, our findings have implications for the design of education and health programs, as well. This improved understanding of inter-sectoral dynamics at all levels may facilitate policy implementation aimed at increasing economic growth — and thereby ultimately improving peoples' livelihoods — in Africa and elsewhere.

Page 1. Revisiting the Link Between Poverty and Child Labor: The Ghanaian Experience† ... Keywords: Africa, Ghana, child labor, human capital accumulation, poverty Abstract: The link between poverty and child labor has traditionally been regarded a well established fact. ...

There is little evidence on the size of the union wage premium in developing economies. The article uses a matched employer-employee data set for Ghana and adopts a quantile regression approach that allows the effects of unionization to vary across the conditional wage ...