This paper estimates the impact of a large temporary poverty relief program, Uruguay's PANES - on birth outcomes. Using program administrative data and longitudinal vital statistics, a significant and precisely estimated reduction in the fraction of low-weight newborns (less than 2,500 g. ) on...

This paper assesses the effects of different health conditions on happiness. Based on a large data set for Latin America, the effects of different conditions are examined across age, gender, and income cohorts. Anxiety and pain have stronger effects than physical problems, likely because people...

We exploit an expansion in social protection to middle-income households to provide evidence on how middle-income households cope with economic shocks and how to build their resilience. We use a regression discontinuity design around the eligibility cutoff for a program that delivered monthly...

This article makes three contributions to the literature. First, it provides new evidence of the impact of community monitoring interventions using a unique dataset from the Citizen Visible Audit (CVA) program in Colombia. In particular, this article studies the effect of social audits on...

This paper investigates the impact of tourism policy on employment, using the Tourism Development Policy (TDP) implemented in the Argentinean province of Salta during the years of 2003 to 2010 as a case study. Following the Synthetic Control Method for comparative case studies, we use a...

This paper investigates the effects of political (mis)alignment on public service delivery when mandates are shared between state and local governments. We analyze sewage treatment policies in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Relying on difference-in-differences estimations, we establish a...

Does providing information improve citizens' perception about government transparency? Does all information matter the same for shaping perceptions about the government? This paper addresses these questions in the context of an online randomized survey experiment conducted in Argentina. Results...

While decreasing inequality is generally considered desirable, and there is a growing understanding of which policies do and do not promote equality, much less is known regarding why these policies are adopted to varying degrees of intensity in different times and places. To explain this...

This paper analyzes the determinants of housing demand for Uruguay and the extent to which housing policies have an impact on their target population. The paper first analyzes the determinants of housing demand, following an approach based on Rosen's (1974) two-step procedure consisting of...

This paper takes advantage of several reforms that provide time and cross sectional variation to identify the effects of unemployment insurance and severance payments on the duration of unemployment and on the separation probability in Argentina. Administrative data permits analysis of the...