This paper reviews the progress economists have made towards achieving an evidence-based educational policy, and highlights challenges that remain. The five main findings are: (1) over the past two decades, much effort has gone into identifying the causal effects of school inputs; this work has...

The paper describes the privatization process in Bolivia, placing emphasis on the particularities of the capitalization mechanism that was used for this purpose, and the regulatory framework introduced as its essential complement. With this background, the paper then details the changes in the...

The wave of privatizations Latin America experienced during the 1990s was integral to stabilization programs and a general reordering of states’ roles in the regional economy. Over the past few years, however, these privatizations have come under increasing fire. Their purported adverse...

This paper analyses the privatization of utilities in Bolivia, detailing the particularities of the capitalization mechanism which was used for this purpose. The analysis suggests that capitalization and regulation, and the liberalization of the utilities sector more generally, succeeded in...

This paper examines how schools choose class size and how households sort in response to thosechoices. Focusing on the highly liberalized Chilean education market, we develop a model inwhich schools are heterogeneous in an underlying productivity parameter, class size is a componentof school...

This paper reviews the progress economists have made towards achieving an evidence-based educational policy, and highlights challenges that remain. The five main findings are: (1) over the past two decades, much effort has gone into identifying the causal effects of school inputs; this work has...

Around 1870 the U.S. had no research universities of note, while today it accounts for the largest number in the world. Many accounts attribute this transformation to events surrounding World War II. In contrast, this paper traces its origins to reforms that began in the 1870s. We first explain...

This paper examines the roles that information and preferences play in determining whether households choose schools with high value added. We study Romanian school markets using administrative data, a survey, and an experiment. The administrative data show that, on average, households could...

This paper analyses the privatization of utilities in Bolivia, detailing the particularities of the capitalization mechanism which was used for this purpose. The analysis suggests that capitalization and regulation, and the liberalization of the utilities sector more generally, succeeded in...

Friedman (1962) observed that the ability of firms to acquire and maintain reputations for quality is a key ingredient for the efficient provision of goods and services in a market economy. This paper explores the implications of school reputation for skill acquisition and labor market outcomes...