The focus in developing countries has shifted from increasing access to early childhood education to improving its quality. However, large scale studies of childcare quality improvement are scarce. In this paper we study the immediate and medium-term effects of a large-scale expansion of...

This paper applies a simple two-factor framework that separates shifts in the relative supply of and demand for more educated workers. The results indicate that the decrease in the skill premium between 1976 and 1981 is related to the reduction in the relative demand for skilled workers, and the...

Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic...

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic model of employment and child care decisions of women after birth in order to i) characterize women's behavior after birth and ii) evaluate the effects of mothers' decisions on children's cognitive ability. I use data from the NLSY to estimate the...

This paper explores the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and urban income distribution in Colombia. The results show that unemployment and inflation have significant regressive effects. Manufacturing output growth is clearly progressive, as well as improved conditions in the rural...

Extensive research has shown comprehensive early interventions can improve the developmental outcomes of disadvantaged children. However, the evidence on the effectiveness of high-quality center-based programs for young children in developing countries is still scarce, where programs are...

This paper uses the data on child development collected around the evaluation of a nursery program to estimate the details of the process of human development. We model development as made of three latent factors, reflecting health, cognitive and socio-emotional skills. We observe children from...

Colombia's unemployment rate rose to 20% during the late 1990s from less than 8% in 1994. This paper argues that this has been the result of high non-wage labor costs embodied in the legislation. The estimated own-wage labor demand elasticity is around 0.5, which implies that a reduction in...