Trinidad and Tobago faces many difficult short- and medium-term challenges that it must address while its oil and gas wealth (projected to last another two decades) provide resources for doing so. This book concludes that the citizens have the requisite political will to implement the difficult...

Der Beitrag untersucht zuerst die Rahmenbedingungen im früheren sozialistischen Wirtschaftssystem und beschreibt die Maßnahmen die beim Übergang zu einer Marktwirtschaft unternommen werden müssen. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden wichtige Probleme und gemachte Erfahrungen während des...

The rebirth of competition and the extensive "exit" that has resulted are among the most important developments in Central Europe since the demise of Communism. This text examines why, how, and to what extent enterprises have reduced their size or left the market altogether during the first...

This paper presents results from a randomized control trial in which approximately 1,000 OLPC XO laptops were provided for home use to children attending primary schools in Lima, Peru. The intervention increased access and use of home computers, with some substitution away from computer use...

A randomized control trial with 945 entrepreneurs in Jamaica shows positive shortterm impacts of soft-skills training on business outcomes. The effects are concentrated among men, and disappear twelve months after the training. We argue that the main channel is increased adoption of recommended...

This study examines whether Jamaica's free public healthcare policy affected health status and labor supply of adult individuals. It compares outcomes of adults without health insurance versus their insured counterparts, before and after policy implementation. The study finds that the policy...

To explore whether schools' causal impacts on test-scores measure their overall impact on students, we exploit quasi-random school assignments and data from Trinidad and Tobago to estimate the causal impacts of individual schools on several outcomes. Schools' impacts on high-stakes tests are...

This paper provides experimental evidence for the impact of home internet access on a broad range of child outcomes in Peru. We compare children who were randomly chosen to receive laptops with high-speed internet access to (i) those who did not receive laptops and (ii) those who only received...