The laws that regulate relations between firms and workers in Mexico distinguish sharply between salaried and non-salaried workers, and they are at the root of the existence of informality. This paper provides a clear definition of informality, distinguishing it from illegality. Using Mexico’s...

This paper empirically assesses the incidence and efficiency of Round I of the federal urban Empowerment Zone (EZ ) program using confidential microdata from the Decennial Census and the Longitudinal Business Database. Using rejected and future applicants to the EZ program as controls, we find...

This paper empirically assesses the incidence and efficiency of Round I of the federal urban Empowerment Zone (EZ) program using confidential microdata from the Decennial Census and the Longitudinal Business Database. Using rejected and future applicants to the EZ program as controls, we find...

We use 292 household surveys from 18 Latin American countries to document patterns in secondary school graduation rates over the period 1990-2010. We find that enrollment and graduation rates increased during that period while dropout rates decreased. We provide two types of explanations for...

Mediante el análisis de información de primera mano recolectada a través de dos grandes encuestas una sobre trayectorias y habilidades conducida en Chile y Argentina en 2008 y 2010 respectivamente, y otra sobre demanda de habilidades realizada entre empresarios de Argentina, Brasil y Chile en...

People and their jobs: What could be more basic to a person's well being? Where people work determines how they live, how their families live, and how economies perform. The quantity and quality of jobs available has implications for individuals and countries alike. That is why the problems with...

This paper uses 113 household surveys from 18 Latin American countries to document patterns in secondary school graduation rates over the period 1990-2010. It is found that enrollment and graduation rates increased dramatically during that period, while dropout rates decreased. Two explanations...

The laws that regulate relations between firms and workers in Mexico distinguish sharply between salaried and non-salaried workers, and they are at the root of the existence of informality. This paper provides a clear definition of informality, distinguishing it from illegality. Using Mexico's...

Total factor productivity (TFP) in Latin America has not increased since the mid- 1970s, and in many countries it has declined. Moreover, resource misallocation can lower aggregate TFP. This paper presents evidence based on firm-level data from 10 Latin American countries to quantify the...

Currently available asymptotic results in the literature suggest that matching estimators have higher variance than reweighting estimators. The extant literature comparing the finite sample properties of matching to specific reweighting estimators, however, has concluded that reweighting...