This study examines the programme Redes Solidarias, a public-private initiative that connected to natural pipelined gas 4,000 households in the Great Buenos Aires Area during 2005. The main features of the institutional framework are described and the main results of an impact estimation...

The grant element is the “gift portion” of a financial transaction. The mathematical technique for arriving at a precise grant element percentage was first proposed by John Pincus of the RAND Corporation in 1963, and developed mathematically by Göran Ohlin of the Development Centre in 1966....

We report a small-sample, preliminary evaluation of the economic impact of temporary overseas work by Haitian agricultural workers. This work occurs in the USA in the context of a pilot program designed as a form of post-disaster development assistance to Haiti. We find that the effects of...

This paper examines the impacts of social pension provision among people of different ages. Utilizing the county-by-county rollout of the New Rural Pension Scheme in rural China, we find that, among the age-eligible people, the scheme provision leads to higher household income (18 percent) and...

This paper shows a somehow counterintuitive result: an increase in the exam difficulty may reduce the average quality (productivity) of selected individuals. Since the exam does not verify all skills, when its standard rises, candidates with relatively low skills emphasized in the test and high...

We provide evidence that the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth reflects a causal effect of cognitive skills and supports the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking student achievement across countries, over...