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...

Cash transfer programs have become extremely popular in the developing world. There is a large literature on the effects of these programs on schooling, health and nutrition, but relatively little is known about possible impacts on child development. This paper analyzes the impact of a cash...

The private provision of educational services has been representing an increasing fraction of the Peruvian schooling system, especially in recent decades. While there have been many claims about the differences in quality between private and public schools, there is no complete assessment of the...

This paper proposes a methodology to resolve the problems that result from using a combination of objective and subjective information in evaluating urban quality of life. The paper further suggests techniques to identify and rank issues of potential importance for urban dwellers. In order to...

This paper explores the role played by policy instruments in access to housing finance by low-income households. It also analyzes the impact of housing credit and subsidies on both the quality of life and the quality of dwelling of the beneficiaries. Using the Quality of Life Surveys conducted...

This book looks at the potential and the limits of policies to promote entrepreneurship as an important vehicle for social mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as steps to remove the constrains that hamper entrepreneurship.

This paper uses self-reported data on victimization, subjective well being and ideology for a panel of individuals living in six Argentine cities. While no relationship is found between happiness and victimization experiences, a correlation is documented, however, between victimization...

It has become common wisdom amongst monetary policy professionals that central banks in Latin America should adopt inflation targeting. Pure inflation targeting implicitly assumes a social loss welfare function dependent on only inflation. In this paper using subjective well-being survey data...

Las encuestas LAPOP (Latin American Public Opinion Project) son un instrumento útil y relevante en el análisis cuantitativo de las instituciones políticas y su relación con los ciudadanos de los países de América Latina y el Caribe. Este documento analiza las relaciones entre las...

Este trabajo hace uso de la Encuesta Mundial de Gallup de 2006, que contiene opiniones sobre satisfacción con diversos aspectos de la vida en 130 países. Aunque la relación entre satisfacción e ingreso que se encuentra es muy sólida (tanto entre países como entre individuos en los...