This paper attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of Bolivia's labor market institutions, particularly the Plan Nacional de Empleo de Emergencia (PLANE). It is found that unemployment as conventionally defined may not be the most important problem in Bolivia's labor market, as the non-salaried...

This paper assesses the effects of the Colombian Unemployment Subsidy (US), which includes benefits as well as training for some recipients. Using regression discontinuity and matching differences-in-differences estimators, the study finds that participation in the labor market, earnings of...

This paper analyzes gender differences in three Chilean professional labor markets, business, law and medicine, utilizing a new and rich data set collected for this purpose. The results show that differences in wages attributed to gender are only present in the legal profession. In...

This paper documents the high level of job security protection in Latin American labor markets and analyzes its impacts on employment. The authors show that job security policies have a substantial impact on the level and the distribution of employment in Latin America. These policies reduce...

This paper discusses program evaluation for ProJoven, the Peruvian youth labor training program. Complementing detailed fieldwork, the econometric work implements a two-stage matching procedure on propensity scores, gender and labor income. This allows identification of differentiated program...

En este documento se analiza la organización de las escuelas secundarias en América Latina y el Caribe. Se tratan temas como son la provisión de escuelas para un conjunto estudiantil cada vez más heterogéneo y la triple función de preparar a los alumnos para la educación superior, formar...

This paper examines the current status of secondary education in Latin America in the context of world-wide economic changes and identifies a wide variety of policy options for ensuring that secondary education can play a positive role in the region's economic and social development. The paper...

This study was prepared for the Financial Services and Poverty Reduction research project and was presented at the conference with the same name held at Bank headquarters in September of 2004. It first establishes the considerable welfare cost borne by the region's poor when facing uncovered...

This publication examines job creation and the work of the IDB from two supporting policy perspectives: (i) policies and programs to improve the business climate and investment for private sector-driven growth; and, (ii) labor market policies and programs. For each of these two pillars, the...

Latin America has the dubious distinction of being the region with the highest level of occupational segregation in the world. In this context, this study poses four important questions. Has occupational segregation by sex decreased in the 1990s? Can we expect occupational segregation to decline...