Raising labor productivity is recognized as a critical factor for increasing economic growth and reducing poverty levels in Latin America. Low levels of education continue to be singled out as the main obstacle to higher productivity in the region. We examine the scope for education to lift...

This paper uses a new data set to study household responses to adverse income shocks in seven Latin American countries. The results show (i) that households respond to income shocks mainly by increasing their labor force participation, selling assets, and cutting back on human capital...

Schooling is a major factor in economic development. There is extensive empirical literature on what determines schooling attainment. But most of this literature uses micro data to explore connections between schooling attainment and family background and experiences, local markets, local...

This paper argues that welfare programs are linked with the destruction of social capital, as measured by interpersonal trust in laboratory games. The paper employs experimental data for representative samples of individuals in four Latin American capital cities (Bogota, Lima, Montevideo, and...

Poverty reduction remains one of the main challenges for Latin America at the end of the 20th century. Most of the countries in the region are classified as middle income by international standards, and yet they register poverty rates well above what would be expected given their GDP per capita....

This paper studies the probability of receiving employer-paid training and training independently of who finance it for permanent and temporary workers in Chile. We use data from the Social Protection Survey, EPS, which allow us to construct a panel of workers with information from 2002, 2004,...

This study analyzes social mobility and human capital accumulation among ethnic minorities in Mexican urban areas, exploring changes in educational attainment and labor market status and using panel data from the Mexican Family Life Survey (MFxLS). The results indicate important ethnic...

This paper studies a model where student effort and talent interact with parental and teachers' investments, as well as with school system resources. The model is rich, yet sufficiently stylized to provide novel implications. It can show, for example, that an improvement in parental outside...

Over the last two decades Mexico has had an open trade regime, experienced macroeconomic stability, and made substantial progress in education. However, average workers' earnings have stagnated and earnings for workers with more schooling have declined, compressing the earnings distribution and...

This paper develops a search and matching model where firms and workers are allowed to form matches (jobs) that can be formal or informal. Workers optimally choose the level of schooling acquired before entering the labor market and whether to search for a job as unemployed or as self-employed....