This is the first study exploring the causal effect of education on teenage fertility in Argentina. We exploit an exogenous variation in education from the staggered implementation of the 1993 reform, which increased compulsory schooling from 7 to 10 years. We find a negative overall impact of...

There is a strong gap in school enrollment rates between young girls with and without children in Uruguay. This paper aims to explain if this gap responds to a cause-effect relationship, identifying the impact of becoming a teen mother on the educational outcomes of young girls. Our...

Basic sanitation facilities are still lacking in large parts of the developing world, engendering serious environmental health risks. Interventions commonly deliver in-kind or cash subsidies to promote private toilet ownership. In this paper, we assess an intervention that provides information...

Basic sanitation facilities are still lacking in large parts of the developing world, engendering serious environmental health risks. Interventions commonly deliver in-kind or cash subsidies to promote private toilet ownership. In this paper, we assess an intervention that provides information...

Empirical studies attempting at testing dualism in developing countries often rely on an ex-ante definition of the primary and the secondary sector. Many times this methodology causes biases in the estimation due to sample selection problems. Also, such definitions may be arbitrary sometimes. We...

While tariff and quota barriers in agricultural, food and manufactured products have been declining due to the proliferation of multilateral trade agreements, there is increasing debate regarding the impact of product and process standards and technical regulations, since they may have become a...

This paper studies the effect of welfare programs on work incentives and the labor supply of adults in developing countries. The document builds on the experimental evaluations of three programs implemented in rural areas: Mexico’s PROGRESA, Nicaragua’s Red de Protección Social (RPS) and...

The harshness of punishment society chooses to impose on crime offenders is mandated by law. However, the quality of life in prison can make this punishment harsher. This creates a variation in the severity of punishment which is not legislated and may differ from society's taste for penalties....

In the nineties Argentina implemented a large education reform (Ley Federal de Educación – LFE) that mainly implied the extension of compulsory education in two additional years. The timing in the implementation substantially varied across provinces, providing a source of identification for...