Teachers are the most fundamental input of students' learning. For this reason, developing teaching skills is a policy priority for most governments around the world. We experimentally evaluate the effectiveness of "Let's All Learn to Read," a one-year professional development program that...

Canonical human capital theories posit that education, by enhancing worker skills, reduces the likelihood that a worker will be laid-off during times of economic change. Yet, this has not been demonstrated causally. We link administrative education records from 1987 through 2002 to nationally...

This paper examines how rural households cope with climate change related rainfall shocks by re-allocating children's time between domestic activities and school attendance. Households affected by an unanticipated rainfall shock face an inter-temporal trade-off between current household income...

To study the causal impact of oil royalties on human capital, we exploit quasi-experimental variation arising from a law in Ecuador that transfers resources to municipalities regardless of their oil-producing status. We find that royalties increase the likelihood of students completing primary...

In 1997, the Mexican government designed the conditional cash transfer program Progresa, which became the worldwide model of a new approach to social programs, simultaneously targeting human capital accumulation and poverty reduction. A large literature has documented the short and medium-term...

This paper presents the results of an impact evaluation, with an experimental design, which estimates the effect on learning math of a remote tutoring program offered to girls and boys aged 9-14 years in three departments of El Salvador. The program used low-tech interventions such as text...

We evaluated the effects of a 10-week intervention that randomly provided access to remote training to parents of preschool children during summer vacations in Peru. In response to learning losses during COVID-19-induced school closures, educational coaches offered guidance and support to...

This paper evaluates how new information influences families' applications and assignment outcomes in elementary school choice settings. Specifically, using a multi-country RCT based in Tacna, Peru and Manta, Ecuador, we examine the effect of providing personalized information on schooling...

We evaluate the effects of a 10-week intervention that randomly provided access to remote coaching to parents of preschool children over the summer break in Peru. In response to learning losses during school closures induced by COVID-19, education coaches offered guidance and encouragement to...

We study the welfare produced by a coordinated school assignment system that is based exclusively on minimizing distance to schools, comparing the matches it produces to a system that includes household preferences using a deferred acceptance algorithm. We leverage administrative data and a...