This working paper presents an up-to-date and prospective assessment of water security throughout the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region, with a focus on infrastructure needs, to aid in strategic thinking towards planning and management in key water-using sectors such as agriculture,...

This paper is the first to use program administrative data from Brazil's National Employment System (SINE) to assess the impact of SINE job interview referrals on labor market outcomes. Data for a five-year period (2012-2016) are used to evaluate the impact of SINE on employment probability,...

Ambient air pollution is a serious problem in cities in south-central Chile because of massive combustion of wood as fuel for residential heating. To reduce air pollution emissions, Chile's environmental authority has implemented a large-scale program consisting of replacing old, highly...

Does providing information improve citizens' perception about government transparency? Does all information matter the same for shaping perceptions about the government? This paper addresses these questions in the context of an online randomized survey experiment conducted in Argentina. Results...

This paper estimates the direct and spillover effects of two matching grants schemes designed to promote firm-level research and development (R&D) investment in Chile on firm productivity. Because the two programs target different kinds of projects - the National Productivity and Technological...

The labor force participation of women is lower than the labor force participation of men. This empirical regularity is particularly acute in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In terms of labor market productivity and growth potential, these lower participation rates constitute a reserve of...

Simplified tax regimes reduce both tax rates and compliance costs for small firms. On the one hand, these regimes increase the number of businesses formally registered and have the potential of also expanding the safety net when they subsidize the contributions to social security of workers in...

This paper estimates the impact of an agricultural technology adoption program on agricultural production and income using an experimental approach. The context of analysis is the Program for the Support of Innovation in Agricultural Technology (PATCA II) implemented in the Dominican Republic....

Is a school's impact on high-stakes test scores a good measure of its overall impact on students? Do parents value school impacts on high-stakes tests, longer-run outcomes, or both? To answer the first question, we apply quasi-Experimental methods to data from Trinidad and Tobago and estimate...

While the relationship between business cycles and employment is a topic of continuing interest, it has received limited attention in the literature focusing on developing countries. This study adds to the literature as it analyzes the heterogeneous correlations of the business cycle with...