Papers I liked at the Midwest International Economic Development Conference.

Last weekend I visited the fantastic city of Madison (which makes you feel that there is hope for such a thing as an ecologically sustainable city) for the 12th Midwest International Economic Development Conference.

This is a small but very specialized and well organized conference, which rotates every year between Madison and Minnesota. Gordon Hanson gave a thought provoking keynote talk about dynamic comparative advantages.  

I presented one of the papers using the Gambia networks data. Many papers called my attention, among them some deserve special mention:

Jason Fletcher reproduces the polemic hump-shape relationship between ethnic diversity and economic outcomes (Ashraf and Galor) using data from our host state in Genetic diversity and economic outcomes: Evidence from high schools in Wisconsin Another great paper by Jennifer Alix-Garcia about forest conservation in Mexico, It's Complicated: Direct vs. Incentive-based Land Conservation in Mexico Rossella Calvi  using a very nice historic data to test the Long-Term Effects of Access to Health Care: Medical Missions in Colonial India Johanna Fajardo-Gonzalez presented a paper about the effects of hipsterization of quinoa (which coauthor Marc Bellemare has blogged many times,) The Welfare Impacts of Rising Quinoa Prices: Evidence from Peru A couple of great papers about effects of education in Latin America: Juan Castro says “schools still matter” in The Contribution of School Influences and Early Childhood Environments to the Difference in Cognitive Development between Urban and Rural Children in Peru  and Pablo Pena showed an impresive linear relationship between birth day and within-class school performance in Mexico that is Creating winners and losers: Relative age in school and its impact on outcomes in childhood and adulthood