Evidence on the impacts of a large-scale expansion in public preprimary education is limited and mostly circumscribed to high and middle-income countries. This paper estimates the effects of such an expansion on progression in primary school in rural communities of Guatemala. Combining...

This paper examines Official Development Assistance (ODA) in the aftermath of large natural disasters between 1970 and 2008. Using an event-study approach, the paper finds that while the median increase in ODA is 18 percent compared to pre-disaster flows, the typical surge is small in relation...

This paper uses the Mexican Social Mobility Survey 2006 to analyze intergenerational social mobility as it relates to entrepreneurial activity. First, the paper analyzes whether entrepreneurs experience greater upward social mobility than self-employed workers or employees. Second, probit models...

Does entrepreneurship contribute to improving social mobility in Ecuador? This paper constructs a pseudo-panel to analyze the dynamic effect of entrepreneurship on Ecuadorian household incomes during the period 2002-2010. Using three estimation scenarios, the paper finds a significant level of...

A prerequisite for the adoption of redistributive policies in a democracy is that there be elected representatives who are either committed to or who have an incentive to advocate for such policies. To evaluate the prospects of such an outcome, this pa- per develops a theory exploring two...