This report focuses not only on the gaps facing Latin America in both education and technology, but especially on the interactions between the two. The central premise of the report is that skills and technology interact in important ways, and this relationship is a fundamental reason for the...

This paper selectively synthesizes much of the research on Latin American and Caribbean labor markets in recent years. Several themes emerge that are particularly relevant to ongoing policy dialogues. First, labor legislation matters, but markets may be less segmented than previously thought....

The note looks at poverty in Ecuador, assessing macroeconomic developments through its policies to maintain stability with fiscal discipline, and increase economic productivity and competitiveness, in particular, the 1998/99 crisis, the 2000 dollarization and their effect on poverty. From 1990...

This note synthesizes the findings of research on trade and labor in the region, including World Bank studies on: (i) trade and job quality, (ii) informality, and (iii) labor policies in the region. First, the evidence on the relationship between trade liberalization, macro-restructuring and...

This policy note aims to take stock of regional experiences in the area of targeting, both in the context of government systems and the World Bank's operational work, in South Asia. The main objectives are to review targeting systems and practices in the context of government programs; to...

The authors assess the effects of private capital and independent regulatory agencies on telecommunications performance by using cross-country panel data from 1990 to 2003. In general, they find that having independent regulatory agencies positively affects affordability and labor productivity,...

The authors review the stylized facts on regulatory reform in telecommunications and its effects on telecommunications development and Internet penetration in Latin America. Relying on data from the International Telecommunication Union, the Information for Development Program (InfoDev), and the...

The authors study the effect of pre-primary education on children's subsequent school outcomes by exploiting a unique feature of the Uruguayan household survey (ECH) that collects retrospective information on preschool attendance in the context of a rapid expansion in the supply of pre-primary...

Children in developing countries have deep deficits in math and language. Personalized coaching for teachers has been proposed as a way of raising teacher quality and child achievement. We designed a coaching program that focused on one aspect of teacher quality - teacher-child interactions -...

The report shows that there is good evidence that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have improved the lives of poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted to poor households, have raised consumption levels, and have reduced poverty, by a substantial amount in some countries....