Title: Essays in development economics
Description: Chapter one studies the response of educational investments to greater export opportunities in India. Recent studies have shown that trade liberalization increases skilled wage premiums in developing countries. This result suggests globalization may benefit skilled workers more than poor unskilled workers, increasing inequality. This effect may be mitigated, however, if school enrollment responds to new global opportunities. I study how the impact of globalization varies across Indian districts with different costs of English language acquisition. Some people have lower costs of learning English due to linguistic predispositions and psychic costs associated with past nationalistic pressure to adopt Hindi. I demonstrate that districts with a more elastic supply of English skills benefited more from globalization: they experienced greater growth in information technology jobs and school enrollment. Consistent with these findings, they experienced smaller increases in skilled wage premiums. Chapter two explores the determinants of an individual's decision to participate in financial markets. Are those with more education, more financial education, or higher cognitive ability more likely to hold financial assets? This is a difficult question to answer, as these factors are closely correlated with a host of other potentially confounding characteristics. Using instrumental variables and panel techniques, we find that greater cognitive ability and educational attainment lead to significant increases in financial market participation. In contrast to previous findings, we find no evidence that high school financial literacy education affects savings or investment decisions.

Many welfare programs rely on local agents to allocate cash or in-kind payments. These agents usually have significant discretion that can reshape the incentives created by the program. Chapter three compares official attendance records and independently taken records from a school district in Mumbai, India, that provides grain every month a child's attendance exceeds 80%. This program, meant to improve nutrition and attendance, creates incentives for teachers to inflate attendance to ensure a student receives the grain. We find that teachers exaggerate attendance in response and assist certain children more than others, specifically by inflating more the attendance of girls, children with higher test scores and students from lower caste families, but less for Islamic students.