School autonomy and parental participation have been frequently proposed as ways of making schools more productive. Less clear is how governments can foster decentralized decision making by local schools. This article shows that across eight Latin American countries, most of the variation in...

Child labors effect on academic achievement is estimated using unique data on third and fourth graders in nine Latin American countries. Cross country variation in truancy regulations provides an exogenous shift in the ages of children normally in these grades, providing exogenous variation in...

Child labor's effect on academic achievement is estimated using unique data on third and fourth graders in nine Latin-American countries. Cross-country variation in truancy regulations provides an exogenous shift in the ages of children normally in these grades, providing exogenous variation in...

Enhancing the efficiency of education and health spending is a key policy challenge in G7 countries. The paper assesses this efficiency and seeks to establish a link between differences in efficiency across countries and policy and institutional factors. The findings suggest that reforms aimed...