With millions of women around the developing world thrown into self-employment but with low productivity, the question about how to increase the profitability and growth potential of their businesses is increasingly relevant for poverty reduction and gender equity. This study evaluates the...

We use a large unique household panel data set spanning 16 years to estimate the impacts of three major Chinese forest conservation and reforestation programs on household incomes. The programs are the most significant of China’s Key Priority Forestry Programs, namely the Sloping Land...

We investigate the effect of education Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) on teenage pregnancy. Our main concern is with how the size and sign of the eect may depend on the design of the program. Using a simple model we show that an education CCT that conditions renewal on school...

This study evaluates the impact of school canteen programs on the performance of rural primary schools in Senegal using a “randomized experiment”. 120 schools which had never had school canteens were selected in the four poorest regions of Senegal. They were randomly assigned to treatment...

In this study, we estimate the impacts of the “Land of Love, Water Cellar for Mothers” project that was launched to address comparatively serious water scarcity in western China. In these areas, male labourers flock to cities as a result of China's social transformation, leaving women as the...

In the nineties Argentina implemented a large education reform (Ley Federal de Educación – LFE) that mainly implied the extension of compulsory education in two additional years. The timing in the implementation substantially varied across provinces, providing a source of identification for...

In this paper we analyze the impact an emergency social assistance program, PANES, on school attendance and child labour. The program was carried out in Uruguay from April 2005 to December 2007. Specifically, we analyze the effects of the cash transfer component of the plan (Ingreso Ciudadano),...

This paper investigates the impact of the pilot phase of Paraguay’s conditional cash transfer programme, Tekoporã, on the demand for healthcare and education, and how much of this impact was due to the cash transfers and/or due to changes in behaviour/preferences, possibly as an effect of...

In this paper we propose a method to estimate externality effects in cash transfer programmes, even in cases when the benefit is not randomly assigned. Externality is assessed through the decomposition of the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) into participation (direct) effect and...

The Benefício de Prestação Continuada (BPC) program is a non‐contributory pension addressed to poor elders over 65 years‐old. This paper evaluates its effects on household composition and on labor market outcomes of the elders and their co‐residing relatives. We could not capture any...