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...

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...

This paper makes use of the 2006 Gallup World Survey, which includes opinions on satisfaction with various aspects of life in 130 countries. Although a very solid relationship is found between satisfaction and income (both across and within countries), raising doubts regarding the well-known...

This paper assesses the welfare impacts of local investments projects in rural areas of Guatemala. Using census track data from two rounds of the Guatemalan population census, we find, as expected, that local investment in schools significantly boost enrollment and normal progression in school,...

This paper examines the association between trust and community involvement with fear of crime. Fear of crime is measured by three typical perception measures: neighborhood security; walking alone in the dark; and the risk of becoming a victim. The data is from Chile’s Victimization Survey....

The paper uses microeconomic data to characterize entrepreneurs by income group and selected household, individual and business characteristics, finding that entrepreneurship is rare but more frequent in the upper class than the middle or lower classes. Middle-class entrepreneurs are, on...

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...

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...