This paper investigates the importance of the age composition for pandemic policy design. To do so, it introduces an economic framework with age heterogeneity, individual choice, and incomplete information, emphasizing the value of testing. Calibrating the model to the US Covid-19 pandemic...

Clean water has a largely unknown economic value, particularly to small communities whose agricultural activities take place on river shores. In November 2015, the rupture of a mining tailings dam in the municipality of Mariana led to a record disposal of toxic residuals in southeast Brazil. A...

This chapter describes tools and a methodology to model wind and flood risks from tropical storms under present and future climate accounting for natural infrastructure. Wind forcing provide a crucial link to hydrodynamic models that can be used in risk assessments to estimate extent of and...

We present two case studies in which coastal vulnerability modeling was used to quantify the role those coastal ecosystems play in reducing risk to coastal communities now and with future sealevel rise. These analyses were used to inform post-disaster reconstruction and coastal resilience...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we evaluate the responses to the questions on inflation expectations in the World Economic Survey for sixteen inflation targeting countries. Second, we compare inflation expectation forecasts across countries by using a two-step approach that selects...

Seguro Popular (SP) was introduced in 2002 to provide health insurance to the 50 million Mexicans without Social Security. This paper tests whether the program has had unintended consequences, distorting workers' incentives to operate in the informal sector. The analysis examines the impact of...

Providing unemployment insurance is particularly problematic in countries with high informality because workers can claim unemployment benefits and work in the informal sector at the same time. This paper proposes a method to evaluate alternative schemes to provide insurance for unemployed...

CCT programs have become the anti-poverty program of choice in many developing countries. Numerous evaluations, often based on rigorous experimental designs, leave little doubt that such programs can increase enrollment and grades attained--in the short term. But evidence is notably lacking on...

Gains from government crime-reducing programs are not always visible to the average citizen. The media overexpose crime events, but the absence of crime rarely makes the news, increasing the risk that citizen may have inaccurate perceptions of security. Through a survey experiment carried out in...