This article studies the link between migration, remittances and asset accumulation for a panel of poor rural households in Mexico over the period 1997--2006. In a context of financial markets' imperfections, migration may act as a substitute for imperfect credit and insurance provision (through...

By focusing on human capital investment, the Mexican Oportunidades program will influence the economic choices of the rural poor. To understand how beneficiaries may alter their behavior as a result of this intervention, this paper uses administrative data to analyze the economic activities of...

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This paper provides empirical assessments of one of the leading explanations for the increase in skill premium in Mexico and Argentina during the 1990s: trade liberalisation. We present evidence showing that imports increase skill premium in Mexico, while exports reduce it. In Argentina, trade...

This paper exploits an extensive Brazilian micro-enterprise survey and the 1996 introduction of a business tax reduction and simplification scheme (SIMPLES) to examine three questions. First, do high tax rates and complex tax regulations really constitute a barrier to the formalization of...

This article explores if countries can lobby the US government for the allocation of US bilateral foreign aid. We consider an informational lobby model where lobbying has two effects. First, a direct effect by informing US policymakers about their countries’ needs. Second, an indirect effect...

This paper studies panel quantile regression models with individual fixed effects. We formally establish sufficient conditions for consistency and asymptotic normality of the quantile regression estimator when the number of individuals, n, and the number of time periods, T, jointly go to...

Summary This paper links employment dynamics to the business cycle in Argentina and examines the self-employed sector. We evaluate whether this sector resembles the industrialized countries view, where it is characterized as being creative and dynamic, or the dualistic view, where it is seen as...

This article analyzes the nature of micro-entrepreneurship in Argentina and relates it to the empirical evidence available for other Latin American countries. It focuses on whether the sector resembles the neoclassical view, characterized by the risk-taking nature of the entrepreneurial...