We measure the contribution of firm-embedded productivity to cross-country income differences. By firm-embedded productivity we refer to the components of productivity that differ across firms and that can be transferred internationally, such as blueprints, management practices, and intangible...

This article has three goals. First, it describes the genesis of fiscal rules in Peru and its degree of compliance. Second, it estimates the effect of fiscal rules adoption on public investment. Last, it analyzes the impact of alternative fiscal rules on public investment and public debt...

This paper analyzes how labor ows respond to permanent idiosyncratic shifts in rm-level production functions and demand curves using very detailed Swedish micro data. Shocks to rms physical productivity have only modest eects on rm-level employment decisions. In contrast, the paper documents...

By analyzing a novel dataset on publications by the Inter - American Development Bank (IDB), we shed light on the extent to which the knowledge production of a multilateral development bank can reach its beneficiaries. We find that IDB publications are downl oaded mostly in the American...

Recent increases in political polarization in social media raise questions about the relationship between negative online messages and the decline in political trust around the world. To evaluate this claim causally, we implement a variant of the well-known trust game in a survey experiment with...

This paper estimates the impact of catastrophic natural disasters on economic growth using an event study methodology on a country panel dataset from 1970 to 2019. The severity of the events is determined by the associated mortality. We find that affected economies-which, given the way natural...

This paper presents an overview of how health outcomes vary across cities in Latin America and discusses some of the known drivers of this variation. There are large disparities in outcomes across cities and across neighborhoods of the same city. Because health is closely related to the...

We study the impact of a mobile app to record daily financial transactions, coupled with enumerator monitoring visits every two weeks, on youths' investment in financial literacy and financial behavior. The treatment led to a positive and statistically significant effect on financial literacy...

Canonical human capital theories posit that education, by enhancing worker skills, reduces the likelihood that a worker will be laid-off during times of economic change. Yet, this has not been demonstrated causally. We link administrative education records from 1987 through 2002 to nationally...

Using a standard trust game, we elicit trust and reciprocity measures in a representative sample of adult players in Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay, a country that exhibits relatively better levels of tolerance towards migrants than other Latin American countries. We find no...