Do creative industries have positive spillovers for the local economy in middle-income countries, for instance by attracting creative workers who benefit entrepreneurs and workers in other industries? Creative industries are considered highly innovative and productive and several studies in...

Behavioral biases often lead to suboptimal decisions, a vulnerability that extends to policymakers who operate under conditions of fatigue, stress, and time constraints and with significant implications for public welfare. While behavioral economics offers strategies like default adjustments to...

Many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are interested in diversifying their energy sources for energy security and in contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gases. Non-traditional renewable energy (NTRE) sources, which include wind, solar, geothermal and small-scale hydropower,...

Citizens confront multiple challenges when attempting to access public services. This article focuses on an aspect yet unaddressed by existing literature on administrative burdens: the complexity of the written language used by government agencies in Latin America. It presents an impact...

Citizens confront multiple challenges when attempting to access public services. This article focuses on an aspect yet unaddressed by existing literature on administrative burdens: the complexity of the written language used by government agencies in Latin America. It presents an impact...

This paper explores the development of public sector capabilities for Productive Development Policies in Costa Rica through four case studies of successful experiences, with less successful cases presented as counterfactuals. To some extent the paper tests the Technical, Organizational and...

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...

Cash transfer and other social protection programs in developing countries have often been accompanied by measures to foster financial inclusion, such as the adoption and use of bank accounts and electronic means of payments. Argentina's social benefits are paid in bank accounts and accessed...

The existing literature shows that women are more likely to pay taxes than men. Yet, there is less consensus on the gendered responses to interventions aimed at boosting tax compliance among non-payers. In this study, we exploit a field e xperiment designed to increase property tax compliance to...

This paper studies tax evasion in the form of under-reported wages in Ecuador using microdata from a combination of electronic billing and personal income tax returns filed in 2017. Bringing together this novel combination of data, the study applies the standard method Pissarides and Weber...