We estimate the impact of access to information and communication technologies on agricultural profitability and child labor among isolated villages in rural Peru. We exploit an intervention that provided at least one public (satellite) payphone to 6,509 rural villages that did not previously...

This paper evaluates the impact of the Chilean Supplier Development Program, aimed at improving and stabilizing the commercial linkages between small and medium-sized suppliers and their large firm customers, during the period 2003-2008. Applying propensity score matching and...

This paper estimates the impact of the conditional cash transfer program, Red de Oportunidades, on human capital outcomes in areas with different incidences of poverty: indigenous and rural non-indigenous areas of Panama. The analysis relies on data from the Living Standards Measurement Survey...

Most Latin American countries have ABC (acronyms from the Spanish words of voucher, mortgage and savings) designed social housing program. Little is known of the impacts of these programs. In this paper we estimate the welfare affects of twelve of these programs. We estimate whether the programs...

The international community has pledged 11 billion dollars to Haiti, a country where non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provide nearly all public goods and services. This raises at least two questions: How can NGOs most effectively perform their own work, and how can NGOs integrate their...

In this paper we present evidence that homeowners are happier than nonhomeowners and it is homeownership that causes the difference in happiness. The data used is for seventeen Latin American countries obtained from the LatinBarometer surveys. The association between homeownership and happiness...

The main finding of this impact evaluation is that beneficiary firms of FONTAR as a whole and of ANR in particular, spend more on innovation activities such as research and development and purchase of technology. Increments in innovation expenditures are found even when the amount received by...

Industrial clusters are commonly targeted to receive financial support allocated to local-based development projects. Cluster promotion is seen as an effective industrial policy tool aimed at improving productivity and employment generation. Nevertheless, despite its popularity as a regional...

Industrial clusters are commonly targeted to receive financial support allocated to local-based development projects. Cluster promotion is seen as an effective industrial policy tool aimed at improving productivity and employment generation. Nevertheless, despite its popularity as a regional...

Industrial clusters, which are commonly targeted to receive financial support allocated to locally based development projects, are seen as an effective industrial policy tool for improving productivity and generating employment. Nevertheless, identifying clusters and assessing their economic...