This Working Paper provides an in-depth analysis of public-private collaboration (PPC) in Chilean productive development policies (PDPs) through five case studies under two specific polices: the Technology Consortia Program and the National Cluster Policy. The analysis is based on a set of more...

Climate change is imposing a large burden on the most vulnerable populations, particularly in the developing world. Establishing consistent causal relationships, however, is difficult because a multiplicity of climatic, economic and sociodemographic elements are combined to create the conditions...

This paper provides an overview of the reserve requirement measures undertaken by the Central Bank of Peru. It provides a rationale for the use of these instruments as well as empirical evidence of their effectiveness. In general, the results show that tightening reserve requirements has the...

This study estimates the effects of the 1970 Ancash earthquake on human capital accumulation on the affected and subsequent generation, 37 years after the shock, using the Peruvian censuses of 1993 and 2007. The main finding is that males affected by the earthquake in utero completed on average...

This study explores the impact of air pollution on adverse birth outcomes. The study focuses on the effect of breathable particulate matter with diameter of 10 micrometers or less (PM10) on the likelihood of premature birth and low birth weight (LBW). The study exploits the fact that in 2011 the...

This paper uses joint scaling methods and similar items from three large-scale surveys to place voters, parties and politicians from different Latin American countries on a common ideological space. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the findings reveal that the "median" voter in Latin America...

The literature has identified that countries with higher levels of openness tend to present a larger government sector as a way to reduce the risks to the economy that openness entails. This paper argues that there are a number of policies that can mitigate trade-induced risks, many of which do...

Gains from government crime-reducing programs are not always visible to the average citizen. The media overexpose crime events, but the absence of crime rarely makes the news, increasing the risk that citizen may have inaccurate perceptions of security. Through a survey experiment carried out in...

In-service teacher training aims to improve the supply of public education. A randomized experiment was conducted in Mexico to test whether teacher training could increase teacher efficiency in public secondary schools. After seven and a half months of exposure to a trained teacher, students...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the causal effects that upgrading slum dwellings has on the living conditions of the extremely poor. In particular, we study the impact of providing better houses in situ to slum dwellers in El Salvador, Mexico and Uruguay. We experimentally evaluate the...