The literature on aid effectiveness has focused more on recipient policies than the determinants of aid allocation yet a consistent result is that political allies obtain more aid from donors than non-allies. This paper shows that aid allocated to political allies is ineffective for growth,...

Money is used as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account. Most recent analyses of currency choice in an international setting have focused on the denomination of reserves - the store of value role. However, public data are only aggregate and exclude several countries. This...

Achieving inclusive and quality education for all is a global priority, and policymakers are still grappling with the best ways to ensure the poorest and most marginalized children are in school and learning. About 120 million children, many from rural areas, are still out of school, despite a...

A two-year randomized evaluation shows that the effectiveness of mobile mentors on schooling outcomes crucially depends on their training. While a standard training modality in highly marginalized communities in Mexico generates 0 results, enhanced training yields sizable treatment effects on...

When potential beneficiaries share their knowledge and attitudes about a policy intervention, their decision to participate and the effectiveness of both the policy and its evaluation may be influenced. This matters most notably in integrated social policies with several components. In this...

Parents and students from different socioeconomic backgrounds value differently school characteristics, but the reasons behind this preference heterogeneity are not well understood. In the context of the centralized school assignment system in Mexico City, this study analyzes how a large...

We explore which financial constraints matter the most in the choice of becoming an entrepreneur. We consider a randomly assigned welfare program in rural Mexico and show that cash transfers significantly increase entry into entrepreneurship. We then exploit the cross-household variation in the...

Money is used as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account. Most recent analyses of currency choice in an international setting have focused on the denomination of reservesthe store of value role. However, public data are only aggregate and exclude several countries. This...