Single-Sex Schooling: Separate But Equal?

Does single-sex education significantly improve an individual’s future labor market outcome? Sherrilyn M. Billger, Illinois State University, attempted to answer this question in her research entitled, Reconstructing School Segregation? The Impact of Single-Sex Schooling on Labor Market Outcomes. Billger presented her findings to Illinois Wesleyan students and faculty on March 10, 2004

Living Wage Ordinances

Since 1994, 130 municipalities have adopted living wage ordinances, which mandate that covered workers receive an hourly wage providing enough income to keep the individual above the poverty line. This study identifies what factors have lead to the proliferation of living wage laws across the United States while also determining what characteristics have prompted some municipalities to pass living wage ordinances while others have not. This research also considers the impact of living wages on municipalities that have adopted such laws. To further elucidate the issues associated with living wage ordinances, two cities—Baltimore and Los Angeles—are examined as case studies. Ultimately, this study concludes that municipalities that have adopted living wage laws share several characteristics and that living wage ordinances have provided significant benefits at relatively small costs

Essays on Development Economics

This dissertation uses individual-level and aggregate data to study topics in development economics. The first chapter analyzes the impact of Chinese competition on Mexican labor markets. Over the past two decades, the growth of manufacturing in China has significantly impacted international trade. This paper explores how the dramatic rise in Chinese manufacturing exports influences employment in Mexico through product competition in the US export market. Following Autor, Dorn, and Hanson (2013), we compare employment outcomes for formal workers living in different Mexican labor markets to changes in Chinese import competition from 1993 to 2003. We find that exposure to Chinese competition has negative labor market effects for formally employed Mexican workers. In particular, a formally employed individual working in a labor market that experiences the average change in exposure to Chinese competition is 2.0 to 2.7 percentage points less likely to be formally employed in five years. The second chapter examines the under-reporting of workers wages in Mexico. Non-compliance of firms with tax regulations is a major constraint on state capacity in developing countries. We focus on an arguably under-appreciated dimension of non-compliance: under-reporting of wages by formal firms to evade payroll taxes. We compare two sources of wage information from Mexico --- firms' reports of individuals' wages to the Mexican social security agency and individuals' responses to a household labor-force survey --- to investigate the extent of wage under-reporting and how it responded to an important change in the social security system. We document that under-reporting by formal firms is extensive, and that compliance is better in larger firms. Using a difference-in-differences strategy based on the 1997 Mexican pension reform, which effectively tied pension benefits more closely to reported wages for younger workers than for older workers, we show that the reform led to a relative decline in under-reporting for younger workers. The empirical patterns suggest that giving employees incentives and information to improve the accuracy of employer reports can be an effective way to improve payroll-tax compliance. The third chapter studies the effect of trade liberalization on fertility, sex ratios, and infant mortality in India. We compare women and births in rural Indian districts more or less exposed to tariff cuts. For low socioeconomic status women, tariff cuts increase the likelihood of a female birth and these daughters are less likely to die during infancy and childhood. On the contrary, high-status women are less likely to give birth to girls and their daughters have higher mortality rates when more exposed to tariff declines. Consistent with the fertility-sex ratio trade-off in high son preference societies, fertility increases for low-status women and decreases for high-status women. An exploration of the mechanisms suggests that the labor market returns for low-status women (relative to men) and high-status men (relative to women) have increased in response to trade liberalization. Thus, altered expectations about future returns from daughters relative to sons seem to have caused families to change the sex-composition of and health investments in their children

Improving Reading Skills by Encouraging Children to Read: A Randomized Evaluation of the Sa Aklat Sisikat Reading Program in the Philippines

We evaluate a program that aims to improve children's reading skills by providing classes with age-appropriate reading material and incentivizing children to read through a 31 day read-a-thon. During the read-a-thon, the program significantly increases the propensity of children to read, causing 20 percent more children to have read a book in the last week at school and increasing the number of books read by 2.3 in the last week and 7.2 in the last month. These increases extend both after the end of the program and outside of school, although at lower rates. The program also increased students’ scores on a reading assessment, causing students’ scores to improve by 0.13 standard deviations immediately after the program. The effect persisted even after the program ended with an effect of 0.06 standard deviations three months later.education, reading, development

The Impact of Foreign Aid on Development and Aggregate Welfare in Developing Countries

Over one billion people across the globe live in extreme poverty, struggling to survive on less than one U.S. dollar per day. The persistently low levels of aggregate welfare and human development in developing countries have recently caught the attention of many politicians and social observers. As the developed nations and multinational organizations of the world are called upon to increase development assistance to these impoverished countries, a question must be asked: Will increased foreign aid effectively raise human development in developing countries? While many studies have analyzed the impact of development aid on economic growth in developing nations, few have addressed the impact of development aid on more comprehensive areas of development. Analyzing data on 87 developing countries from 1980 to 2000, this study employs two-stage least squares estimation to evaluate the impact of foreign aid on the Human Development Index (HDI), a composite index of development and aggregate welfare, while controlling for the level of pro-poor public expenditure within a developing country. In addition, an interaction term between foreign aid and a measure of macroeconomic policies is utilized to determine if economic policy has an impact on the effectiveness of development assistance. This study finds that greater foreign aid is associated with lower levels of HDI after controlling for GDP and pro-poor public expenditure. In addition, the study concludes that macroeconomic policies do not influence the level of HDI in developing countries

Improving Reading Skills by Encouraging Children to Read in School: A Randomized Evaluation of the Sa Aklat Sisikat Reading Program in the Philippines

We show that a short-term (31 day) reading program, designed to provide age-appropriate reading material, to train teachers in their use, and to support teachers’ initial efforts for about a month improves students’ reading skills by 0.13 standard deviations. The effect is still present three months after the program but diminishes to 0.06 standard deviations, probably due to a reduced emphasis on reading after the program. We find that the program also encourages students to read more on their own at home. We find no evidence that improved reading ability improves test scores on other subjects.

Enlisting Employees in Improving Payroll-Tax Compliance: Evidence from Mexico

Non-compliance of firms with tax regulations is a major constraint on state capacity in developing countries. We focus on an arguably under-appreciated dimension of non-compliance: underreporting of wages by formal firms to evade payroll taxes. We develop a simple partial-equilibrium model of endogenous compliance by heterogeneous firms to guide the empirical investigation. We then compare two independent sources of individual-level wage information from Mexico — firms’ wage reports to the Mexican social security agency and workers ’ responses to a household laborforce survey — to investigate the extent of wage under-reporting and how it responded to an important change in the social security system. We document that under-reporting by formal firms is extensive, and that compliance is better in larger firms. Using a difference-in-differences strategy based on the 1997 Mexican pension reform, which effectively tied pension benefits more closely to reported wages for younger workers than for older workers, we show that the reform led to a relative decline in under-reporting for younger workers. Within metro area/sector/firm size cells, the decline in under-reporting was greater in cells initially employing a younger workforce on average. The empirical patterns are consistent with our theoretical model and suggest tha