Over the last three decades, Mexico’s macroeconomic policy has been driven by a sound orthodox strategy: an open economy via many trade agreements signed since the mid-1980s, a nominal exchange rate under a flexible regime since 1994, central bank autonomy, and responsible fiscal policy, among...

This paper presents the first rigorous empirical evidence of the impact of a large hydrocarbon project in both its economic and environmental dimension. Concentrating on Peru’s largest hydrocarbon project, the Camisea Gas Project, which began operating in the dense Amazonian jungle under...

This paper contributes to the teacher sorting literature by analyzing equity in the distribution of teachers in three educational systems in Latin America, with different equalization policies, teacher assignment rules, and incentives to work in disadvantaged schools: Chile, Colombia, and Peru....

The literature on development effectiveness has traditionally focused on the ex-post analysis of projects. While this is the appropriate method of measuring benefits, a previous step must be taken as a forerunner to good ex-post evaluation: the measurement of the efficiency in the execution of...

We use a field experiment to evaluate the impact of two informational get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns to boost female electoral participation in Paraguay. We find that public campaigns had no effect either on the probability of registration, or on voter turnout in the 2013 presidential...

Recent studies document that, in many cases, the schools that parents prefer over others do not improve student test scores. This could be because (a) parents cannot discern schools causal impacts, and/or (b) parents value schools that improve outcomes not well-measured by test scores. To shed...

The important debate about how economic fluctuations affect employment reallocation in heterogeneous businesses is currently open in the literature. This debate is relevant as it matters for the understanding of the labor market dynamics, and for devising labor policies that aim at dampening...

We study the effects of increasing cash grants on the education attainment of low-income middle and high school students in Mexico. Starting in 2009, the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer (CCT) program increased the average grant in middle and high school by 27 percent for females and 30...

This paper presents evidence of the effects of gender diversity on firm innovation outcomes and their productivity in Colombian manufacturing firms, by extending a CDM model to include women’s participation in science, technology and innovation (STI) activities and production processes. The...

This paper evaluates a field experiment in Mexico in which a quasi-experimental sample of new homes was provided with insulation and other energy efficient upgrades. A novel feature of our study is that we deploy large numbers of data loggers which allow us to measure temperature and humidity at...