Social protection programs, common in developing countries, can be wide ranging. Expenditures on social schemes are large, but their effectiveness and ability to act as safety nets against shocks can be limited. This paper devises a tractable empirical framework to explore several hypotheses in...

Overview -- Organizing framework of the study and structure of the report -- Stylized facts about crime and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean -- The transmission of violence across generations and early interventions -- Youth, education, and brain development -- The nexus between...

This paper evaluates the global welfare consequences of increases in mortality and poverty generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Increases in mortality are measured in terms of the number of years of life lost (LY) to the pandemic. Additional years spent in poverty (PY) are conservatively...

Economists often default to the assumption that cash is always preferable to an in-kind transfer. Do beneficiaries feel the same way? This paper addresses this issue using longitudinal household data from Ethiopia where a large-scale social safety net intervention (PSNP) operates. Even though...