This paper takes advantage of several reforms that provide time and cross sectional variation to identify the effects of unemployment insurance and severance payments on the duration of unemployment and on the separation probability in Argentina. Administrative data permits analysis of the...

Providing unemployment insurance is particularly problematic in countries with high informality because workers can claim unemployment benefits and work in the informal sector at the same time. This paper proposes a method to evaluate alternative schemes to provide insurance for unemployed...

Unemployment is a pressing problem in many countries in Latin America. Financial crises and increased globalization increase job turnover and therefore the risk of unemployment. To protect workers, Chile implemented an innovative unemployment insurance (UI) system. UI protects workers but...

We analyze the outcomes of 332 cases from a labor court in Mexico in which a judge awarded money to a plaintiff who claimed to have been fired by a firm without cause. The judgments were enforced in only 40% of the cases. A plaintiff may try to enforce a judgment by petitioning the court to...

This paper explores the role of religion in mitigating the degree to which unemployment reduces subjective well-being and it examines its support of social programs. The paper goes beyond existing literature in three ways: It extends existing literature to Latin America and Caribbean countries;...

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the regions most exposed and vulnerable to climate-related risks, with large shocks occurring regularly. Climate change is exacerbating the frequency and variability of climate related extremes and increasing slow onset events, threatening social...

The Bolivian government fostered an electricity cost supporting scheme to attenuate the effect of the nationwide full lockdown on domestic consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper evaluates its effect on the levels of energy consumption during lockdown, and the monetary savings it...

Covering the full population of applicants to the Jamaican Conditional Cash Transfer Program (PATH), we explore whether receiving PATH benefits alters the academic returns to subsequently attending a more preferred public secondary school. To uncover causal associations, we exploit exogenous...

We exploit an expansion in social protection to middle-income households to provide evidence on how middle-income households cope with economic shocks and how to build their resilience. We use a regression discontinuity design around the eligibility cutoff for a program that delivered monthly...