This paper estimates the effects of school accountability on year-to-year teacher mobility in Chile. An accountability program was introduced between 2012 and 2015, which established sanctions for persistently low-performing schools, including the threat of closure if they failed to improve...

We analyze the effects on teacher retention and between school mobility of a program that rewards excellence in pedagogical practice in Chile. Teachers apply voluntarily for the award and those who succeed on a set of assessments receive a 6 percent annual wage increase for up to 10 years. We...

The extensive sorting of more talented teachers into the most advantaged schools contributes to the wide socioeconomic achievement gaps in Latin America. The Chilean Pedagogical Excellence Assignment (AEP, for its Spanish acronym) is a unique program in the region that provides monetary...

This paper estimates the importance of temptation (Gul and Pesendorfer, 2001) for consumption smoothing and asset accumulation in a structural life-cycle model. We use two complementary estimation strategies: first, we estimate the Euler equation of this model; and second we match liquid and...

Policy-makers have increasingly turned to ‘in-work transfers’ to boost incomes among poorer workers and strengthen work incentives. One attraction of these is that labour supply elasticities are typically greatest at the extensive margin. Because in-work transfers are normally subject to...

This paper examines the role of simplified heuristics in the formation of preferences for public goods. Political scientists have suggested that voters use simplified heuristics based on the positions of familiar parties to infer how a proposed policy will affect them and to cast a vote in line...