This study analyzes mobility patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic for eight large Latin American cities. Indicators of mobility by socioeconomic status (SES) are generated by combining georeferenced mobile phone information with granular census data. Before the pandemic, a strong positive...

This paper analyzes extractive industries in Colombia and their connections to other economic activities in the country. We use detailed social security data on all formal employees to create an industry-relatedness measure using labor flows between industries. Drawing on the vast network...

The current coronavirus pandemic is an unprecedented public health challenge that has devastating economic impacts for households. Using a sample of 230,540 respondents to online surveys in 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, we show that the economic impacts are large and unequal:...

The objective of this report is to examine the extent to which countries in Latin America and the Caribbean participate in global value chains and what are the drivers of such participation. Production processes have been increasingly fragmented worldwide. For example, the production of the...

This paper solves and estimates a stochastic model of optimal inter-temporal behavior to assess how changes in the design of the unemployment benefits and pension systems in Brazil could affect savings rates, the share of time that individuals spend outside of the formal sector, and retirement...

Technical education and training has been dramatically expanding in Brazil recently. However, there remains no evidence on the cost effectiveness of this alternative track to a more general education. This paper quantifies the wage returns of completing technical and vocational education and...

This paper describes the patterns of worker turnover in selected Latin American countries and their implications for wage inequality. It documents a higher positive annual wage growth rate for job to job changers compared to stayers, due to turnover capturing the immediate gains from search...

In many countries, labor courts play a central role in the determination of firing costs by monitoring and supervising the procedures for dismissals, and, eventually, deciding severance payments mandated by the employment protection legislation (EPL). To get some insights about the impact of...

Does compliance with low-cost civic duties increase demand for social accountability? We address this question by conducting a field experiment at train stations in Buenos Aires. We create exogenous variation in compliance with paying the public transportation fare by i) highlighting sanctions...