Since the beginning of the 1980s, the world has undergone a major shift in thinking about the appropriate economic role of the state. Privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has been at the heart of this change. The track record on privatization, however, is still very limited. This...

This paper examines the effects of the expansion of the water network in urban shantytowns in Argentina. We find large reductions in the presence, frequency, and severity of diarrhea episodes among children in the households reached by network expansions relative to the control group. Moreover,...

Este trabajo examina los efectos de la expansión del agua en los barriadas urbanas de Argentina. Se encuentran grandes reducciones en la presencia, frecuencia y severidad de episodios de diarrea entre los niños de las viviendas que han sido alcanzadas por la expansión de la red. Aún más,...

The study of how crime affects different income groups faces several difficulties. The first is that crime-avoiding activities vary across income groups. Thus, a lower victimization rate in one group may not reflect a lower burden of crime, but rather a higher investment in avoiding crime. A...

Abstract In the last years, several countries implemented policy interventions to entitle urban squatters, encouraged by the results of studies showing large welfare gains from entitlement. We study a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles to very poor families in a suburban area of...

We estimate the causal effect of mandatory participation in the military service on the involvement in criminal activities. We exploit the random assignment of young men to military service in Argentina through a draft lottery to identify this causal effect. Using a unique set of administrative...

Secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development. The evaluation of the causal effects of property rights, however, is a difficult task as their allocation is typically endogenous. To overcome this identification problem, we exploit a natural experiment in the...

We study the effects of titles on parcel valuation and urban land market development (real estate transfers, rentals, and mortgages), and the dynamics of deregularization by exploiting a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles to very poor families in a suburban area of Buenos Aires,...