Housing, particularly for low income urban households, is a long-standing challenge in India. In 2012, 96 per cent of the all India urban housing shortage of 18.78 million was confined to low-income economic groups. This study empirically examines three facets of urban India's housing demand...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the causal effects that upgrading slum dwellings has on the living conditions of the extremely poor. In particular, we study the impact of providing better houses in situ to slum dwellers in El Salvador, Mexico and Uruguay. We experimentally evaluate the...

Neighborhoods can considerably affect children's future outcomes, but the forces through which they operate are not well understood yet. I study how local schools affect the educational achievement of low-income students when their neighborhood changes as a result of an inflow of more affluent...

Increased urbanisation poses serious challenges to adequate housing in the cities of the Global South. Many have focused on the issues of access to serviced land, housing finance, and public subsidy in augmenting the supply of low-income affordable housing while ignoring the criticality of...

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...

The Value-Added Tax (VAT) is the most prevalent consumption tax globally, yet it is frequently deemed highly regressive. To address this, we propose a Personalized VAT (PVAT) devised in conjunction with a distributional policy. We aim to achieve three objectives: increase revenue collection,...