This paper uses 113 household surveys from 18 Latin American countries to document patterns in secondary school graduation rates over the period 1990 2010. It is found that enrollment and graduation rates increased dramatically during that period, while dropout rates decreased. Two explanations...

This paper analyzes gender bias in teaching in low-performing schools in Chile. To carry out the analyses, the authors used videotaped classes for fourth graders and coded 237 tapings. Results show a general (although not uniform) bias in teachers' actions that resulted in less attention to...

This study analyzes mobility patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic for eight large Latin American cities. Indicators of mobility by socioeconomic status (SES) are generated by combining georeferenced mobile phone information with granular census data. Before the pandemic, a strong positive...

This paper analyzes extractive industries in Colombia and their connections to other economic activities in the country. We use detailed social security data on all formal employees to create an industry-relatedness measure using labor flows between industries. Drawing on the vast network...

Do quality at entry assessments enhance the delivery of development projects? In this paper we take advantage of approval and execution systems in place at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to examine whether projects that have higher quality at entry-captured through grading scores...

The current coronavirus pandemic is an unprecedented public health challenge that has devastating economic impacts for households. Using a sample of 230,540 respondents to online surveys in 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, we show that the economic impacts are large and unequal:...