This dissertation explores three important topics in the Development Economics literature. The first chapter provides further evidence on the consequences of illness episodes on earnings and consumption in Indonesia. We exploit a rich panel dataset that allows us to combine fixed effects and...

Over the last decade Latin America and the Caribbean region has achieved important progress towards the World Bank Group's goals of eradicating extreme poverty and boosting income growth of the bottom 40 percent, propelled by remarkable economic growth and falling income inequality. Despite this...

This paper investigates the causal consequences of Tropical Storm Agatha (2010) – the strongest tropical storm ever to strike Guatemala since rainfall records have been kept – on household welfare. The analysis reveals substantial negative effects, particularly among urban households. Per...

This paper examines the reasons behind the low rates of participation in old age pension programs in developing countries. Using a large set of harmonized household surveys from Latin America we assess how much of the low participation can be explained by involuntary rationing out of jobs with...

Episodes of uninsured illness can seriously compromise a household’s well-being. This article provides further evidence on the consequences of illness episodes on earnings and consumption in Indonesia. We exploit a rich panel data set that allows us to combine fixed effects and instrumental...

Consumption of food away from home is rapidly growing across the developing world. Surprisingly, the majority of household surveys around the world haven not kept up with its pace and still collect limited information on it. The implications for poverty and inequality measurement are far from...

Portfolio Footprints compare sub-national data on World Bank portfolio allocations with indicators of need, including poverty. Such analyses allow a better understanding of the spatial distribution of Bank investments and whether these investments are reaching their intended beneficiaries. In...

I derive poverty indices taking into account both the absolute and relative aspects of income well-being. The trade-off made by the social planner between those two aspects is captured at individual level by a well-being ordering. This ordering evaluates the well-being of an agent based on her...

We evaluate the global welfare consequences of increases in mortality and poverty generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Increases in mortality are measured in terms of the number of years of life lost (LY) to the pandemic. Additional years spent in poverty (PY) are conservatively estimated using...