Fiscal policy can change poverty and inequality substantially or little depending on the government's redistributive effort. We develop a diagnostic framework to assess how aligned fiscal policies are with supporting a minimum living standard and human capital accumulation, as well as reducing...

Celebrated by academics, multilateral organizations, policy-makers and the media, Mexico's Progresa/Oportunidades conditional cash transfers program (CCT) is constantly used as a model of a successful anti-poverty program. Here I argue that the transformation of well-trained scholars into...

Poverty and wellbeing are multi-dimensional. Nobody questions that deprivations and achievements go beyond income. There is, however, sharp disagreement on whether the various dimensions of poverty and wellbeing can be aggregated into a single, multi-dimensional index in a meaningful way. Is...

Fiscal policy can change poverty and inequality substantially or slightly depending on the government's redistributive effort. We develop a diagnostic framework to assess how aligned fiscal policies are with supporting a minimum living standard and human capital accumulation, as well as with...

Conventional wisdom states that fiscal policy redistributes little in Latin America. Lower tax revenues and, above all, lower and less progressive transfers have been identified as the main cause. Existing studies show that, while in Europe the distribution of all transfers combined (cash and...

This study demonstrates that regression discontinuity designs will arrive at biased estimates when attributes related to outcomes predict heaping in the running variable. We discuss several approaches to diagnosing and correcting for this type of problem. Our primary example focuses on the use...

This paper explores the public's expressed attitudes towards redistribution, then addresses three important gaps in the literature on redistribution. First, studies of support for redistribution have used data focused on desires for transfers from the rich to the poor or to the poor in general,...

Prior research in economics and psychology has shown that process can matter in determining outcomes in many social situations. In particular, the opportunity to express ones opinion-voice-has been found to be highly influential. However, little is known about the channels through which voice...