The slave trades out of Africa represent one of the most significant forced migration experiences in history. In this paper I illustrate their long-term consequences. I first consider the influence of the slave trade on the "sending" countries in Africa, with attention to their economic,...

We explore the relation between fertility and the business cycle in Latin American countries taking advantage of the existing cross-country and within-country differences in both fertility and macroeconomic conditions. First, we use a panel of 18 nations for over 45 years to study how different...

Very little is known about the effectiveness of SME policies, and a careful look at the structure, mechanisms and incentives provided by these policies suggest caution in their implementation and, most importantly, the need to carefully and closely monitor their results. This paper relies on the...

This paper investigates cyclicality in women's labour supply motivated by the hypothesis that it contributes to smoothing household consumption in environments characterized by income volatility. We use comparable individual data on about 1.1 million women in 63 developing and transition...

In August 2010 the Costa Rican government implemented a comprehensive program to increase compliance with legal minimum wages, the Campaign for Minimum Wages. To evaluate the impact of the Campaign, we use a regression discontinuity approach, which compares what happened to workers who before...

We develop and estimate a search model that captures the specific characteristics of Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) labor markets and the crucial differences between men and women. Labor force participation decisions are integrated in the labor market dynamics, taking into account sample...

Since 2007, the Ecuadorian government has required teacher candidates to pass national skill and content knowledge tests before they are allowed to participate in merit-based selection competitions for tenured positions at public schools in an attempt to raise teacher quality. We evaluate the...

We provide causal evidence that children's school schedules contribute to the persistence of the gender pay gap between parents. Historically, French children have had no school on Wednesdays. In 2013, a reform reallocated some classes to Wednesday mornings. Exploiting variations in the...

Although there is ample support for the causal link between home visit parenting programs and child development outcomes, few studies have explored what it is that drives this relationship – to what extent home visit programs are implemented as designed in terms of the content and strategies...

This paper evaluates the impacts of a public program that introduced access to part-time childcare centers for children younger than four years of age in poor urban areas in Nicaragua. We explore the effects of this program on several measures of children's and parental outcomes. Our...