Introducing financial incentives to increase productivity in the public sector tends to be politically and bureaucratically cumbersome, particularly in developing countries. Behavioral interventions could be a low-cost alternative, both politically and financially, although evidence of their...

Analyses that examine the role of international standards on export performance has been concentrated on quality certifications. Very little is known about the impact of environmental certifications on exports. In this paper we employ firm-level data from Ecuador to assess the impact of the ISO...

This article examines changes in the frequency and characteristics of domestic violence reports after the start of the pandemic and the imposition of mobility restrictions in six Latin American countries. The study uses three types of data sources: calls to domestic violence hotlines (for the...

The global low-carbon energy transition driven by technological change and government plans to comply with the Paris Agreement makes future gas demand, prices, and associated public revenues uncertain. We assess the prospects for natural gas production and public revenues from royalties and...

When consumption of water and other utilities is measured collectively and payment for such services is equally shared among members of the group, individuals may use more than what is socially optimal. In this paper, we evaluate how installation of individual meters affects water consumption....

This paper analyzes how slum upgrading programs impact elementary school childrens attendance in Uruguay. We take advantage of the eligibility rule that deems slums eligible for a SUP program if they have 40 or more dwelling units. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity estimator, we find that...

As transit ridership continues to fall in many cities across the globe, key policy debates continue around whether Uber and other ride-hailing services contribute to this trend. This research explores the effects of ride-hailing to Colombian cities on public transportation ridership using...

In this paper, we show that order effects operate in the context of high-stakes, real-world decisions: employment choices. We experimentally evaluate a nationwide program in Ecuador that changed the order of teaching vacancies on a job application platform in order to reduce teacher sorting...

The literature on ride-hailing has experienced rapid growth in recent years, with an accent on industrialized cities, mainly in the United States and Europe. Previous research has identified the characteristics and preferences of ride-hailing adopters in a handful of cities. However, given their...

This paper examines the effects of management practices on effective tax rates (ETR) in a sample of medium and large manufacturing firms in Ecuador. We use a novel data set on management practice scores matched with administrative tax data from the Superintendence of Companies and the Internal...