Latin American countries are generally characterized as displaying high income and earnings inequality overall along with high inequality by gender, race, and ethnicity. However, the latter phenomenon is not a major contributor to the former phenomenon. Using household survey data from four...

Gender-based wage discrimination is a highly researched area of labor economics. However, most studies on this topic have focused on schooling and paid limited attention to the mechanisms through which cognitive and noncognitive skills influence wages. This paper uses data from adults in seven...

This paper studies gender education gaps among indigenous and nonindigenous groups in Bolivia. Using the National Census of Population and Housing 2012 and an estimation method analogous to difference-in-differences, the paper finds that the intersection of gender and indigenous identity confers...

This paper takes advantage of repeated cross-section household surveys and a sharp discontinuity created by the introduction of an unconditional cash transfer to elders. The paper evaluates the impact of these cash transfers on the educational expenditures for children within a household. The...

This paper investigates the potential of information technology to improve public service delivery and empower citizens. The investigation uses two randomized natural experiments in the renewal of national identification cards by the Bolivian Police. The first experiment arises from the random...

With food prices on the rise, understanding the transmission of price shocks, both internationally and domestically, is central for trade policy analysis. This paper examines spatial market integration and its determinants for ten key food products in Bolivia, across the four most important...

This paper estimates the impact of registering for taxes on firm profits in Bolivia, the country with the highest levels of informality in Latin America. A new survey of micro and small firms enables the authors to control for a rich set of measures of owner ability and business motivations that...

From 1994 onward, Bolivia undertook a major reform of its infrastructure sectors. The authors examine the impact of the reforms from the perspective of poor households in the adjacent cities of La Paz and El Alto, particularly in terms of access to services. Different policies adopted across the...

That free trade allows economies in an ideal world to achieve the greatest possible welfare is one of the few undisputed propositions in economics. In reality, however, free trade is rare. The author argues that many developing countries intervene in trade at least partly to raise revenues, and...

For capturing dynamic demographic relationships, longitudinal household data can have considerable advantages over more widely used cross-sectional data. But because the collection of longitudinal data may be difficult and expensive, analysts must assess the magnitudes of the problems, specific...