Governments in new democracies launch social policies with the purported goal of alleviating the effects of poverty among the most vulnerable households, usually low income families with children. However, this goal is can be thwarted by the clientelistic distribution of social policies'...

This paper employs recently developed econometric models of marginal treatment effects to analyze the relevance of labor market comparative advantage and segmentation in the participation and earnings performance of workers in formal and informal jobs in Argentina. A novel household data set on...

This paper examines the effect of labor market opportunities on schooling-employment decisions in 12 urban areas in Argentina over 12 years, emphasizing the recession/crisis years 1998-2002. The effects of macroeconomic swings on schooling decisions are examined with a focus on whether the...

Returns to schooling in urban Argentina increased from 1992 to 2003, a period of economic reforms and macroeconomic volatility. In this paper I provide the most consistent estimates of returns to education so far, while I also investigate earnings profiles over time. This paper contributes to...

One important concern of governments in developing countries is on how to phase-out large safety nets programs. This paper evaluates the short run effects of one possible exit strategy, programs that promote self-employment, in Argentina. We provide evidence that a small fraction of...

This paper assesses labor market segmentation across formal and informal salaried jobs and self-employment in three Latin American and three transition countries. It looks separately at the markets for skilled and unskilled labor, inquiring if segmentation is an exclusive feature of the latter....

This paper examines changes in individual earnings during positive and negative growth periods in three Latin American economies: Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. We ask whether those individuals who start in the best economic position are those who experience the largest earnings gains or the...

This paper discusses a set of statistics for examining and comparing labor market dynamics based on the estimation of continuous time Markov transition processes. It then uses these to establish stylized facts about dynamic patterns of movement using panel data from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico....

What is the relationship between economic growth and its volatility? Does political instability affect growth directly or indirectly, through volatility? This paper tries to answer such questions using a power-ARCH framework with annual time series data for Argentina from 1896 to 2000. We show...

Limited availability of workfare programs and unemployment insurance and a large informal sector are features of the Argentine labor market at the outset of the 2001 economic crisis. This paper tests the hypothesis whether informal work is an alternative to workfare participation before a...