the impact of rural electric access on deforestation rates summary overpopulation and economic industrialization are two common explanations for deforestation political ecology however highlights that good governance and effective land management at the local level can offset the impact of population growth and development on environmental degradation in this paper we provide an innovative argument derived from political ecology to explain deforestation but rather than pursing a bottom up approach to governance we take a top down approach we argue that the state can ease deforestation rates by weaning rural populations off of the consumption of biomass for their energy needs by expanding rural electrification access using a panel analysis of 158 countries for the years 1990 2000 and 2010 we find that not only does rural electrification cause deforestation rates to decrease but also that it is more robust in explaining deforestation than population growth or development our study provides two innovations to political ecology it highlights that the state can help rather than hinder local populations with managing their local environments in a more sustainable way by providing them with public goods based energy alternatives and it supplements political ecology s qualitative focus on environmental degradation with a generalized quantitative analysis of state based initiatives on deforestation our results suggest that current global initiatives addressing deforestation specifically the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd agenda of the united nations framework convention on climate change should not only assist local land managers but also work with the state to ensure universal access to electricity

the nba and the influx of international basketball players the determinants of salaries for professional athletes in the national basketball association nba are examined to investigate how international athletes have fared relative to athletes trained in the united states it is found that international basketball players were paid a large premium above other players of similar skills and characteristics for the 1996 97 and 1997 98 seasons after which the premium disappeared this temporary premium is likely attributable to a winner s curse experienced by nba teams before investing significant resources in scouting and evaluating international players

optimal selling strategies when buyers may have hard information abstract consider a revenue maximizing seller who can sell an object to one of n potential buyers each buyer either has hard information about his valuation i e evidence that cannot be forged or is ignorant the optimal mechanism is characterized it turns out that more ignorance can increase the expected total surplus even when the buyers are ex ante symmetric the object may be sold to a buyer who does not have the largest willingness to pay nevertheless an additional buyer increases the expected total surplus in the symmetric case whereas more competition can be harmful if there are ex ante asymmetries

repudiation and renegotiation the case of sovereign debt a model of sovereign debt is analyzed in this model renegotiation arises in a natural way because information is incomplete the renegotiation game has many equilibria the standard contract theory approach suggests that the parties should agree to choose the efficient equilibrium strategies when the contract is written refinements of the equilibrium notion such as strategic stability suggest that a very inefficient equilibrium may be chosen the tension between these two approaches raises deep questions about the correct way to analyze a large class of contracting problems copyright 1989 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

long term gains from electrification in rural india the authors know surprisingly little about the long run impacts of household electrification this paper studies the impacts on consumption in rural india over a seventeen year period allowing for both internal and external villagelevel effects under our identifying assumptions electrification brought significant consumption gains for households who acquired electricity for their own use we also find evidence of a dynamic effect of village connectivity for households without electricity themselves this is suggestive of an external effect which also comes with a shift in consumption spending suggestive of status concerns among those still without electricity labor earnings were an important channel of impact this was mainly through extra work by men there was no effect on average wage rates

racial discrimination in the labor market theory and empirics we review theories of race discrimination in the labor market taste based models can generate wage and unemployment duration differentials when combined with either random or directed search even when strong prejudice is not widespread but no existing model explains the unemployment rate differential models of statistical discrimination based on differential observability of productivity across races can explain the pattern and magnitudes of wage differentials but do not address employment and unemployment at their current state of development models of statistical discrimination based on rational stereotypes have little empirical content it is plausible that models combining elements of the search models with statistical discrimination could fit the data we suggest possible avenues to be pursued and comment briefly on the implication of existing theory for public policy jel j15 j31 j64 j71

market response to banks granting lines of credit abstract prior research has shown and this paper confirms that when the market becomes aware a line of credit is granted the borrower s stock has a positive and significant reaction the borrower s reaction is used to identify the exact date the market becomes aware of the granting of the line of credit this date is used as a one day window to investigate whether the bank s stock also reacts this reaction will be most obvious with large lines of credit all lines of credit larger than us 1 billion granted during the years 1993 1996 are investigated the results show as predicted a positive and significant reaction by the bank s stock

determinants and impacts of rural land market activity evidence from nicaragua summary use of data from nicaragua to examine the performance of land rental and sales markets during 1995 98 which coincide with the implementation of major macroeconomic and sectoral reforms leads to three main conclusions first even though the data point toward an inverse farm size productivity relationship and large differences in land productivity between large and small producers land markets have not led to an equalization of returns among the groups considered second both in 1995 and in 1998 land sales markets have contributed to land concentration suggesting that credit market imperfections impeded demand in land sales markets third the policy reforms undertaken after 1995 have led to a structural shift in the performance of the land rental market instead of transferring land to large owners as it did in 1995 the land market now moves land from large to small producers the quantities involved however remain limited we conclude that if it is to contribute to equity and efficiency liberalization of land sales markets has to be complemented by measures to reduce the attractiveness of speculative land accumulation furthermore measures to reduce the transaction costs of land rental e g titling and to increase effective demand from small producers e g technical assistance and credit will be needed 2003 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

strike three discrimination incentives and evaluation major league baseball umpires express their racial ethnic preferences when they evaluate pitchers strikes are called less often if the umpire and pitcher do not match race ethnicity but mainly where there is little scrutiny of umpires pitchers understand the incentives and throw pitches that allow umpires less subjective judgment e g fastballs over home plate when they anticipate bias these direct and indirect effects bias performance measures of minorities downward the results suggest how discrimination alters discriminated groups behavior generally they imply that biases in measured productivity must be accounted for in generating measures of wage discrimination

the impact and targeting of social infrastructure investments lessons from the nicaraguan social fund this brief summarizes the impact and targeting of social infrastructure investments lessons from the nicaraguan social fund the fund was created in 1990 the benefit incidence and impact of projects financed by the nicaraguan emergency social investment fund are investigated using a sample of beneficiaries a national household survey and two distinct comparison groups the first group is constructed on the basis of geographic proximity between similar facilities and their corresponding communities the second is drawn from the national living standards measurement study survey sample using propensity score matching techniques the analysis finds that the social fund investments in latrines schools and health posts are targeted to poor communities and households whereas those in sewerage are targeted to the better off investments in water systems are poverty neutral education investments have a positive significant impact on school outcomes regardless of the comparison group the analysis finds that use of health investments is less clear using one comparison group the analysis finds that use of health clinics increased as a result of the investments using both it finds higher use of clinics for children under age six with diarrhea with neither comparison group does it find improvements in health outcomes social fund investments in water and sanitation improve access to services but have no effect on health outcomes

how to achieve full electrification lessons from latin america electricity coverage in latin america has increased substantially in recent decades rising from 50 of the population in 1970 to more than 95 in 2015 growth however slowed in the 1990s as many countries experienced difficulties in extending their networks further in particular to serve those living in isolated and rural areas in spite of this the process of electrification was not interrupted and at the beginning of the 2010s decade most countries in the region were able to provide access to electricity to almost all of their populations in this paper we examine the main strategies used in latin america to increase coverage and argue that only a combination of policy efforts has made it possible to achieve the current situation we also examine the remaining obstacles at policy and institutional levels to achieving full coverage

carbon pricing revenues could close infrastructure access gaps introducing a price on greenhouse gas emissions would not only contribute to reducing the risk of dangerous anthropogenic climate change but would also generate substantial public revenues some of these revenues could be used to cover investment needs for infrastructure providing access to water sanitation electricity telecommunications and transport in this way emission pricing could promote sustainable socio economic development by safeguarding the stability of natural systems which constitute the material basis of economies while at the same time providing public goods that are essential for human well being for a scenario that is consistent with limiting global warming to below 2 c we find that domestic carbon pricing without redistribution of revenues across countries has substantial potential to close existing access gaps for water sanitation electricity and telecommunication however for the majority of countries carbon pricing revenues would not be sufficient to pave all unpaved roads and for most countries in sub saharan africa they would be insufficient to provide universal access to all types of infrastructure except water if some fraction of the global revenues of carbon pricing is redistributed e g via the green climate fund more ambitious infrastructure access goals could be achieved in developing countries our paper also bears relevance for the design of climate finance mechanisms as it suggests that supporting carbon pricing policies instead of project based finance might not only permit cost efficient emission reductions but also leverage public revenues to promote human development goals

racial discrimination and professional basketball salaries in the 1990s racial differences in professional basketball player salaries are examined to determine whether the 20 premium paid to whites in the mid 1980s has persisted into the 1990s ols and tobit regressions indicate no difference between white and black salaries controlling for player and team characteristics for the 1994 95 season however censored quantile regressions show substantial racial differences at certain points in the salary distribution whites earn less than blacks at the lower end of the distribution although the difference is not statistically significant and varies with minutes played in contrast whites receive a significant premium 18 at the upper end of the salary distribution these findings are consistent with a form of consumer discrimination in which sports fans prefer to see white star players all else equal

the gender wage gap among recent post secondary graduates in canada a distributional approach using the national graduates survey we examine the trends in the gender wage gap among recent post secondary graduates in canada between 1988 and 2007 female graduates earn on average 6 14 less than males during the period two to five years after graduation decompositions show that observable personal characteristics and job attributes can explain only a small portion of the wage gap we also find that men earn more than women at every point of the distribution interestingly the wage difference shrank in the lower half of the distribution in recent years while it increased in the upper half l ecart salarial entre les sexes chez les nouveaux diplomes postsecondaires une approche distributionnelle a l aide de l enquete nationale aupres des diplomes nous examinons les tendances dans l ecart salarial entre les sexes chez les nouveaux diplomes postsecondaires au canada entre 1988 et 2007 les femmes diplomees gagnent en moyenne de 6 a 14 moins que les hommes durant les 2 a 5 ans suivant l obtention du diplome des decompositions montrent que les caracteristiques personnelles et les attributs de l emploi observables ne peuvent expliquer qu une petite partie de l ecart salarial nous trouvons aussi que les hommes touchent plus que les femmes a chaque point de la distribution salariale de maniere interessante la difference de salaire a diminue dans la moitie inferieure de la distribution lors des annees recentes alors qu elle a augmente dans la moitie superieure

what s different about banks abstract negotiable certificates of deposit cd s trade in the capital market in competition with other securities like commercial paper and bankers acceptances if cd s must pay lenders competitive monetary interest the reserve tax on cd s is borne by bank borrowers viability of the tax means there must be something special about bank loans that makes some borrowers willing to pay higher interest rates than those on other securities of equivalent risk moreover there must be something special about banks that prevents other intermediaries from competing to assure that it never pays to finance loans with cd s

monitoring loan renegotiability and firm value the role of lending syndicates abstract the positive response in capital markets to announcements of private financings is well documented and typically rationalized as a reflection of valuable monitoring and screening services provided by banks and other private lenders this paper investigates the hypothesis that the capacity to renegotiate private debt contracts relatively inexpensively complements monitoring as a source of value to borrowers the context for our study is lending by syndicates of private lenders as the number of lenders increases contracting costs increase and the value associated with the capacity to renegotiate should decline our evidence supports this hypothesis we conduct additional tests to determine whether our results are robust to alternative interpretations such as information leakage or the prospect that syndicate size proxies for information related variables syndicate size remains related to the scale of the market s reaction after taking various borrower and loan characteristics into account

information and control in ventures and alliances this paper develops a theory of control as a signal of congruence of objectives and applies it to nancial contracting between an investor and a privately informed entrepreneur we show that formal investor control is i increasing in the information asymmetries ex ante ii increasing in the uncertainty surrounding the venture ex post iii decreasing in the entrepreneur s resources and iv increasing in the entrepreneur s incentive consict in contrast real investor control that is actual investor interference is decreasing in information asymmetries control rights are further such that control shifts to the investor in bad states of nature

financing renewable energy in africa key challenge of the sustainable development goals abstract given the challenge of offering a development perspective to a rapidly growing population it might be tempting for africa to pursue a strategy of fueling growth with the cheapest source of energy available and take care of the environment later such an approach however would disregard the social cost of fossil fuels which the population would have to bear using the sustainable development goals as a benchmark for inclusive and sustainable growth we identify the synergy effects provided by renewable energy already substantial efforts of financing the additional cost of re are under way an analysis of possible leverage points available instruments and involved actors shows that there remains a large additional potential

household level effects of electricity on income abstract this paper studies the effect of electricity on income using the nepal living standards survey iii nlssiii carried out in the years 2010 11 to account for endogeneity issues we use a two stage probit least squares 2spls model we find that causality runs both ways that is income explains whether a household is connected to electricity but also a household being connected to electricity has a very large and significant effect on income

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

alternative information sources and the information content of bank loans this paper examines the information content of bank loan agreements we differentiate borrowers according to financial analysts percentage earnings forecast errors and most recent forecast revisions the empirical results suggest that banks rely on other indicators as initial screening devices to determine where to best deploy their evaluation and monitoring efforts if these other indicators are reliable and signalimproving prospects banks do little further investigation however if the indicators are noisy and signal declining prospects banks have incentives to expend resources to investigate the borrowers resulting in the production of valuable information recent theories of financial intermediation concentrate on the role of banks in reducing informational asymmetry leland and pyle 1977 suggest that informational asymmetries may be the primary reason that intermediaries exist campbell and kracaw 1980 demonstrate that an important function of financial intermediation is the production of information diamond 1984 develops a model which shows that financial intermediaries can exist simply because they provide an efficient means of evaluating and monitoring borrowers these information transmission theories argue that banks provide unique information production services in an imperfect capital market they suggest that banks know more about the prospects of the firms they lend to than do others thus bank loan agreements should convey useful information to the market a number of researchers empirically examine the uniqueness of bank loans fama 1985 approaches the issue by examining the rates on certificates of deposit and other high grade commercial papers he concludes that since bank borrowers bear the cost of reserve requirements there must be something special about bank loans james 1987 conducts an event study around the announcement of bank credit agreements and reports a significantly positive two day announcement return his results provide evidence support

liquidity provision banking and the allocation of interest rate risk abstract the paper studies the efficient allocation of technology induced interest rate risk and the implications of such risk for efficient liquidity provision complete immunization against interest rate risk is shown to be undesirable as it precludes the exploitation of favourable reinvestment opportunities under the assumptions of diamond dybvig 1983 interest induced valuation risks of long term assets should be born by early withdrawers reinvestment opportunity risks of short term assets by late withdrawers efficient liquidity provision thus entails no shifting of interest rate risk in the absence of additional moral hazard second best allocations can be implemented through unregulated competition among banks

capital structure under costly enforcement we consider financial structure and repayment behavior in a setting where cash flows are private information to the entrepreneur and the cost of enforcing repayment differs across security holders if enforcement costs are lower for shareholders than for creditors a mixed capital structure with debt and equity can obtain in equilibrium under a mixed capital structure creditors intervene in low cash flow states while shareholders intervene in high cash flow states moreover strategic defaults costly bankruptcy shareholder intervention and violation of absolute priority occur with positive probability on the equilibrium path several of the predictions from our framework are consistent with evidence not readily explainable by existing theories

superstars in the national basketball association economic value and policy an econometric analysis demonstrates that television ratings for nba games are substantially higher when certain players superstars are involved thus these superstars are quite important for generating revenue not only for their own teams but for other teams as well using the econometric analysis and additional information on attendance and paraphernalia sales we estimate the value of michael jordan to the other nba teams to be approximately 53 million the positive externality superstars have on other teams can lead to an inefficient distribution of player talent we examine several league policies that might be used to address the externality

wage discrimination in the nba evidence using free agent signings this article takes a step toward understanding potential causes of wage discrimination in an economy highly dependent on the service industry traditionally categorized within the service industry professional sport leagues such as the national basketball association nba provides a unique setting to examine the potential impact of race on salary we analyze free agency contract signings which allow us to better capture the determinants of players wages from 2011 to 2017 to investigate the prominence of wage discrimination in the nba using weighted linear regression models and the oaxaca blinder decomposition we find that black athletes are paid significantly less than their counterparts in addition we also identify the presence of consumer discrimination after controlling the exposure of a player to the audience which is observed through the interaction term between the share of msa population which is white and an identifier for whether a player is black

rural electrification and employment in poor countries evidence from nicaragua summary this paper shows that rural electrification is associated with big changes in the time use of men and women in nicaragua even in the absence of labor saving appliances electricity is shown to increase the propensity of rural nicaraguan women to work outside the home by about 23 but to have no impact on male employment these findings suggest significant potential benefits to rural electrification that are not generally captured in cost benefit analyses such as greater women s earnings and reduced deforestation

non economic engagement and international exchange the case of environmental treaties we examine the role of non economic partnerships in promoting international economic exchange since far sighted countries are more willing to join costly international partnerships such as environmental treaties environmental engagement tends to encourage international lending countries with such non economic partnerships also find it easier to engage in economic exchanges since they face the possibility that debt default might also spill over to hinder their non economic relationships we present a theoretical model of these ideas and then verify their empirical importance using a bilateral cross section of data on international crossholdings of assets and environmental treaties our results support the notion that international environmental cooperation facilitates economic exchange

household electricity access availability and human well being evidence from india according to the 2011 census of india over 31 of india s 1 2 billion people lived in nearly 8000 towns and cities the remaining 830 million people lived in over 638 000 villages about 55 of rural households and 93 of urban households had access to electricity the 2005 indian human development survey showed that on average electricity availability hours of supply per day in rural and urban households were 14 and 19 h respectively desai et al 2007 using nationally representative data from indian human development survey this study estimated the impact of electricity access and availability on two attributes of human well being viz education and health attainment it found a significant positive relationship between electricity availability and well being in rural and urban households electricity accessibility revealed a significant positive relationship only for rural households the paper concludes with implications for electricity policy and infrastructure choices

expropriation risk and technology abstract this paper develops a unified framework to analyze the dynamics of firm investment in countries with poor legal enforcement the firm s technology edge over the government generates endogenous property rights industry variation in the technology gap predicts a sectoral pecking order of expropriations long run investment distortions may be pareto superior relative to persistent investment at the static optimum the dynamics of investment and transfers depend on whether incentives backloading or efficiency frontloading concerns dominate at the initial division of surplus an increase in government efficiency may reduce its welfare the model provides a technology driven rationale for the widespread use of conglomerate structures in emerging market countries

customer preferences attendance and the racial structure of professional basketball teams this paper examines the importance of customer based discrimiantion in professional basketball over the 1980 81 to 1985 86 seasons empirical rsesults offer strong support of the hypothesis that if fans prefer to see players of their own race teams will be influenced in their selection of players by the racial composition of their market area by the same token attendance is found to be positively related to the extent to which the racial composition of the team matches that of the corresponding market area

on the optimality of resetting executive stock options the practice of resetting strike prices on underwater executive stock options has drawn criticism for weakening managerial incentives our model shows that although the anticipation of resetting can negatively affect initial incentives resetting can still be an important value enhancing aspect of compensation contracts even from an ex ante standpoint in fact we find that some resetting is almost always optimal the relative advantages of resetting diminish with greater ability of managers to influence the resetting process greater relative importance of external factors on stock performance and lower costs of replacing incumbent managers

the effects of rural electrification on employment new evidence from south africa this paper estimates the impact of electrification on employment growth by analyzing south africa s mass roll out of electricity to rural households using several new data sources and two different identification strategies an instrumental variables strategy and a fixed effects approach i find that electrification significantly raises female employment within five years this new infrastructure appears to increase hours of work for men and women while reducing female wages and increasing male earnings several pieces of evidence suggest that household electrification raises employment by releasing women from home production and enabling microenterprises migration behavior may also be affected jel h54 l94

rural electrification and household labor supply evidence from nigeria in nigeria the most populated african country rural electrification is a critical issue because of the low household electrification rate and the poor quality of the grid this energy poverty has harmful economic and social consequences in rural areas such as low productivity lack of income generating opportunities and poor housing conditions in this paper we consider electrification as a technical shock that may affect household time allocation using the 2010 2011 general household survey we investigate how electrification affects female and male labor supply decisions within rural households in nigeria focusing on husband wife data we consider potential dependence in spouses labor supply decisions and address the challenge of zero hours of work using a recent copula based bivariate hurdle model deb et al 2013 in addition an instrumental variable strategy helps identify the causal effect of elec trification our results underline that this dependence in spouses labor supply decisions is critical to consider when assessing the impact of electrification on these outcomes electrifi cation increases the working time of both spouses in the separate assessments but the joint analysis emphasizes only a positive effect of electrification on husbands working time in line with the household labor supply approach our findings highlight that within the household the labor supply decisions of one spouse significantly affect those of the other spouse thus if we neglect the effect of electrification on the spouse of the individual examined we may fail to assess how this individual has been actually affected by this common shock on both spouses our results suggest that these within household relationships promote husbands working time at the expense of wives working time

racial discrimination among nba referees the nba provides an intriguing place to assess discrimination referees and players are involved in repeated interactions in a high pressure setting with referees making split second decisions that might allow implicit racial biases to become evident we find that more personal fouls are awarded against players when they are officiated by an opposite race officiating crew than when they are officiated by an own race refereeing crew these biases are sufficiently large so that they affect the outcome of an appreciable number of games our results do not distinguish whether the bias stems from the actions of white or black referees

the differing nature of black white wage inequality across occupational sectors the nature of racial wage inequality appears to differ across occupation sectors specifically i find that all of the racial wage inequality in the white collar job sector can be accounted for by controlling for the academic skill level of each worker but almost half of the overall racial wage inequality remains in the blue collar sector after controlling for each worker s academic skill relatedly after controlling for academic skill i find that black workers are actually more likely to work in the white collar sector than white workers i show that these findings are consistent and arguably directly implied by both preference based and statistical based models of discrimination however omitted variable bias and measurement error also cannot be ruled out as possible explanations

fertility and rural electrification in bangladesh we use a household level panel dataset from bangladesh to examine the household level relationship between fertility and the access to electricity we find that the household s access to electricity reduces the change in the number of children by about 0 1 to 0 25 children in a period of five years in most estimates this finding also applies to retrospective panel data and is robust to the choice of covariates and estimation methods our finding passes falsication test and corroborates with the predictions of our theoretical model on the households time use and consumption pattern

the certification value of private debt renegotiation and the design of financial contracts empirical evidence from europe abstract by using a sample of bank loan renegotiations by european firms i show that the renegotiation of financial contracts bears a certification value while deeply changing the contractual features of the loan over time to the benefit of shareholders i find that amendments to financial covenants and to loan amounts increase the cumulative abnormal returns of a borrowing firm by 10 15 early and less frequent renegotiations of bilateral loans with short maturities also imply a positive stock market reaction amendments signaling the early accrual of new and positive information allow increasing firm value

sovereign debt as intertemporal barter author s kletzer kenneth m wright brian d abstract borrowing and lending between sovereign parties is modeled as intertemporal barter that smoothes the consumption of a risk averse party subject to endowment shocks the surplus anticipated in the relationship offers sufficient incentive for cooperation by all parties including any other competitive agents who are potential lenders to the sovereign the sole punishments consist of renegotiation proof changes in the path of future payments we show that intertemporal trade can be sustained in the absence of any exogenous enforcement of lending relationships whatsoever that is borrowing and lending are possible under anarchy and are supported by punishments that consist of cheating any cheater long term implicit relationships may be fulfilled as the continual renegotiation of simple incomplete short term loans the analysis suggests that the crucial role of the explicit loan contract is the identification of the relationship and the parties involved

data watch the world bank s living standards measurement study household surveys since 1985 the world bank has been collecting household survey data in developing countries that provide a rich source of information for assessing household welfare understanding household behavior and evaluating the impact of government policies this article describes these household surveys known as living standards measurement study lsms surveys and explains how to obtain their data lsms surveys have been implemented in over twenty developing countries and have been used to analyze poverty labor markets health and education pricing policies determinants of school performance savings and consumption smoothing health and nutrition policies and gender and fertility issues

rural electrification gender and the labor market a cross country study of india and south africa abstract this cross country study estimates the effect of household electrification on labor market outcomes for rural individuals in india and south africa two developing countries that have implemented large scale rural electrification schemes in recent decades two identification strategies are used propensity score matching and panel fixed effects estimation we focus on three indicators of labor market success employment earnings and hours worked we find that electrification raises the annual incomes earned by those who work in paid employment for both men and women in both countries for india both genders work fewer hours suggesting that electricity raises productivity for south africa where the labor market has less absorptive capacity there is no employment benefit of electrification but women who work benefit the most from the productivity gains of electrification they have greater increases in earnings than men our findings suggest that the benefits of electrification do not accrue universally but rather depend on gender roles supporting policies and the labor absorptive capacity of the economy

education and labor market discrimination using a model of statistical discrimination and educational sorting we explain why blacks get more education than whites of similar cognitive ability and we explore how the armed forces qualification test afqt wages and education are related the model suggests that one should control for both afqt and education when compar ing the earnings of blacks and whites in which case a substantial black white wage differential emerges we reject the hypothesis that differences in school quality between blacks and whites explain the wage and education differentials our findings support the view that some of the black white wage differential reflects the operation of the

default and renegotiation a dynamic model of debt we analyze the role of debt in persuading an entrepreneur to pay out cash e ows rather than to divertthem in the e rstpartof the paper we study the optimal debt contract specie cally the trade off between the size of the loan and the repayment under the assumption that some debt contract is optimal in the second part we consider a more general class of nondebt contracts and derive sufficient conditions for debt to be optimal among these