This paper analyzes the evolution of gender differences in school attendance and attainment in Latin America and the Caribbean, for both adults who left the educational system and children in school. For individuals 21 years old and above the paper uses a cohort analysis of school attainment....

Porqué los donantes bilaterales intermedian la ayuda a través de una multilateral y no directamente? Este paper sugiere un trade-off: múltiples donantes bilaterales para cada beneficiario puede implicar problemas estratégicos y de coordinación pero mediación a través de una multilateral...

This paper considers a conditional cash transfer program targeting poor households in small rural villages and studies the effects of the geographic proximity between villages on individual enrollment decisions. Exploiting variations in the treatment status across contiguous villages generated...

This paper examines the short and long-run average causal impact of catastrophic natural disasters on economic growth by combining information from comparative case studies. The counterfactual of the cases studied is assessed by constructing synthetic control groups, taking advantage of the fact...

This paper compares the optimal dynamic choices between policies of mitigation and adaptation for three economies: Brazil, Chile and the United States. The focus is on the optimal role of mitigation and adaptation for “environmentally small economies,” i. e. , economies that are witnessing...

There are few reliable estimates of the effects of violence on economic outcomes. This study exploits the manifold increase in homicides in 2008-2011 in Mexico resulting from its war on organized drug traffickers to estimate the effect of drug- related homicides on housing prices. Using an...

Latin America has a comparative advantage in deforestation compared to other forms of climate change mitigation. Thus, to the extent that Latin America should engage in mitigation, the optimal climate change policy should manage these advantages by generating incentives in Latin America to deal...

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the world has undergone a major shift in thinking about the appropriate economic role of the state. Privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has been at the heart of this change. The track record on privatization, however, is still very limited. This...

La literatura sobre la efectividad de la ayuda extranjera se ha enfocado más en las políticas del país que recibe la ayuda que en los determinantes de su distribución. Sin embargo, un resultado consistente es que los aliados políticos obtienen más ayuda de los países donantes que los no...

This paper analyzes the impact of land titling on child health. The empirical evaluation of the effect of property rights typically suffers from selection problems. The paper addresses the selection issue by exploiting a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles. Twenty years ago, a...