We estimate the impact of a large anti-poverty program - the Uruguayan PANES - on political support for the government that implemented it. The program mainly consisted of a monthly cash transfer for a period of roughly two and half years. Using the discontinuity in program assignment based on a...

The single most likely way to leave the unemployment insurance (UI) register in Hungary is not by getting a job but by exhausting entitlement to benefit. Two questions follow. First, what are the implications of the cessation of UI for living standards? Second, does UI exhaustion have much...

This paper estimates the impact of a large temporary poverty relief program, Uruguay’s PANES—on birth outcomes. Using program administrative data and longitudinal vital statistics, a significant and precisely estimated reduction in the fraction of low-weight newborns (less than 2,500 g. ) on...

There is limited empirical evidence on whether unrestricted cash social assistance to poor pregnant women improves children’s birth outcomes. Using program administrative micro-data matched to longitudinal vital statistics on the universe of births in Uruguay, we estimate that participation in...

Falling output and living standards have pushed countries in transition from the socialist system to re-consider how best to target public resources on those in need. The paper investigates the workings of a new social assistance benefit in Uzbekistan, the largest of the former Soviet Central...