Data collected from the Uruguayan household survey (ENHA) of year 2006 is used to provide more evidence and revision on the longer-term impact of pre-primary education on subsequent school attendance and accumulated years of education. In order to control for unobserved individual or household...

We evaluate the impact of joint-liability incentives in the classroom using a randomized field experiment. The instructor designs groups of three students in the classroom and provides a premium to their homework's grade only if all three members of the group meet some requirements. To isolate...

This paper documents the impact of an after-school program called Apoyo Escolar, sited in the most vulnerable neighborhood of a developing country. The outcomes of interest are academic achievement, behavior in the classroom and grade repetition. We designed a field experiment exploiting the...

We study the three-year impact of a private tuition-free middle school on the academic outcomes of poor students. Several features of the treatment school fit with innovative paradigms that have delivered successful outcomes in poor urban areas. Our research design exploits the excess of...

En América Latina, el debate acerca de los resultados heterogéneos en educación formal se ha centrado en las diferencias entre pobres y ricos. Este foco ha guidado a los diseñadores de política. Existen, sin embargo, otras profundas diferencias que reciben escasa o nula atención en la...

En el presente estudio, observamos los resultados de una política de asignación masiva de derechos de usufructo a los cuidacoches, personas que desempeñan –en la informalidad– tareas de vigilancia de vehículos aparcados en las calles. Sorprendentemente, a pesar del costo reducido y los...

We study the impact of high and low frequency incentives in a joint-liability framework on six academic outcomes of undergraduate students using a randomized field experiment. As recently documented in health literature, incentives to exercise are effective in developing healthy habits....

Every day in the pages of national newspapers and television news, we may read and hear about acts of violence that are based upon children and adolescents as victims or as perpetrators. While Press coverage on social issues is extensive, daily events are not fully reflected in the media....

Using a randomized trial, we evaluate the impact of a free privately-managed middle school in a poor neighborhood. The research compares over time adolescents randomly selected to enter Liceo-Jubilar and those that were not drawn in the lottery. Besides positive impacts on expectations, we find...

Although participation rates in the educational system might look impressive for a Latin American country, educational outputs are not that great. Uruguay is characterized by educational gaps and high drop-out rates in the secondary education. In our work we first explore the returns to...