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...

Farmers incur proportional and fixed transactions costs in selling their crops on markets. Using data for Peruvian potato farmers, we propose a method to measure these transactions costs. When opportunities exist to sell a crop on alternative markets, the observed choice of market can be used to...

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have proved to be effective in inducing chronic poor households to invest in the human capital of their children while helping reduce poverty. They have also protected child human capital from the shocks that affect these households. In this paper, we...

This paper provides unique evidence of the positive consequences of seasonal migration for investments in early childhood development. We analyse migration in a poor shockprone border region in rural Nicaragua where it offers one of the main household income diversification and risk coping...

"A variety of theories of skill formation suggest that investments in schooling and other dimensions of human capital will have lower returns if children do not have adequate levels of cognitive and social skills at an early age. This paper analyzes the impact of a randomized cash transfer...