The objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of micro-entrepreneurs income on two Brazilian and Chilean microcredit programs. Drawing on two unique sources of data, control groups are built using the propensity score to match beneficiaries of micro-credit programs with non-beneficiaries...

Unemployment benefit systems are nonexistent in many developing economies. Introducing such systems poses many challenges, which are partly due to the high level of informality in the labor markets of these economies. This paper studies the consequences on the labor market of implementing an...

How effective are export promotion activities in developing countries? What are the channels through which export promotion affects firms' exports, the intensive margin or the extensive margin? Empirical evidence in this respect is scarce. We aim at filling this gap in the literature by...

This paper uses matched social security and program micro data from the Uruguayan Plan de Atención Nacional a la Emergencia Social to investigate the effect of social assistance on formal labor market outcomes. One specific feature of this program is that households could gain and retain...

The literature on aid effectiveness has focused more on recipient policies than the determinants of aid allocation yet a consistent result is that political allies obtain more aid from donors than non-allies. This paper shows that aid allocated to political allies is ineffective for growth,...

Argentina had traditionally enjoyed one of the highest elderly coverage rates in Latin America. However, since the mid-1990s coverage rates started a steady decline, especially for low income workers. In response, the Argentine government implemented a series of sweeping reforms in the...

Export promotion agencies provide exporters with a broad range of services, going from counseling to sponsoring their participation in international trade missions and fairs. These services may have heterogeneous effects and thus contribute differently to achieve the goals of these...

Information problems involved in trading differentiated goods are a priori acuter than those associated with trading more homogeneous products. The impact of export promotion activities intending to address these problems can be therefore expected to differ across goods with different degree of...

This paper presents an impact evaluation of a revamped version of the Dominican youth training program Juventud y Empleo. The paper analyzes the impact of the program on traditional labor market outcomes and on outcomes related to youth behavior and life style, expectations about the future and...