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...

Using administrative data from the urban Mexican Oportunidades program, this paper analyzes why poor households choose less education for their children, even when offered financial compensation for school attendance. Each school year, half of recipients forgo income for which they are eligible...

This paper uses a natural policy experiment to estimate how changes in the costs of engaging in criminal activity may influence adolescents’ decisions in crime participation and school attendance. The study finds that, after an exogenous decrease in the severity of judicial punishment imposed...

How does future income uncertainty affect child labour and human capital accumulation? Using a unique panel dataset, we examine the effect of changes in climate variability on the allocation of time among child labour activities (the intensive margin) as well as participation in education and...

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs are important anti-poverty programs in Latin America and the Caribbean. There is little evidence, however, of the effectiveness of ongoing CCT programs several years after they have begun. Such evidence is particularly relevant for policymakers because...