This paper assesses the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at improving the reading skills of struggling third-grade students in Colombia. In a series of randomized experiments, students participated in remedial tutorials conducted during school hours in small groups. Trained teachers used...

While there is a large body of literature evaluating how active labor-market policies such as training impact worker outcomes, relatively few studies examine how such policies impact workers who are displaced by trade. The few studies on training and trade-related labor adjustment focus on the...

The extensive sorting of more talented teachers into the most advantaged schools contributes to the wide socioeconomic achievement gaps in Latin America. The Chilean Pedagogical Excellence Assignment (AEP, for its Spanish acronym) is a unique program in the region that provides monetary...

Most tax agencies use letters as the method of communicating with taxpayers. Still, other technologies exist that could be more effective. This paper reports the results of a field experiment conducted by the National Tax Agency of Colombia (DIAN), using phone calls to reduce tax delinquencies....

The vigorous growth of the Chinese economy together with its growing role in international trade has raised fears of deindustrialization among developing countries. This study draws on the large increase in the international trade exposure of the Brazilian economy from 2000 to 2012 to assess the...

A rise in import competition can put downward pressure on local prices, increasing consumer welfare, but these gains might be unequal across households depending on the basket of goods they consume. Using a consumer price index for Mexico that varies at the product and city level, this paper...

We study the impact of import competition on Mexican firm outcomes between 2003 and 2013 by exploiting variation in import penetration across industries. Focusing on the increase in import competition from China that Mexico experienced during this period, we find that the trade shock induced a...

This paper examines the effects of skill advantages at age six on different types of parental investments, and long-run outcomes up to age 27. We exploit exogenous variation in skills due to school entry rules, combining 20 years of Chilean administrative records with a regression discontinuity...

This paper studies the impact that import competition from China had on firms performance in the manufacturing sector in Peru in 2005-2015. Using a firm-level dataset that covers the universe of firms in the formal sector, our results reveal that Peruvian firms reacted to increased competition...