Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region in the world, with an annual homicide rate of more than 20 per 100,000 population and with an increasing trend. Yet most evidence of crime concentration, geo-temporal patterns, and event dependence comes from cities in high-income...

This paper presents the results of a nationwide very low-cost behavioral intervention aimed at increasing preschool attendance in Uruguay. Specifically, behaviorally-informed messages were delivered through the government's official mobile app. We document a large reduction in absenteeism, as...

We study the impact of the recent migration crisis on entrepreneurship in transit countries using a unique locality-level panel from the 2010 and 2016 rounds of the Life in Transition Survey for 18 European countries. To capture the exogenous variation in exposure to transit migration, we...

Does political corruption erode civic values and foster dishonest behaviour? This paper tests this hypothesis – using Mexico as an example – by combining data on local government corruption and cheating in school tests. Results show that, following revelations of corruption by local...

Does exposure to mass migration affect economic behavior, attitudes and beliefs of natives in transit countries? In order to answer this question, we use a unique locality-level panel from the 2010 and 2016 rounds of the Life in Transition Survey and data on the main land routes taken by...

This paper investigates the impact of a progressive tax reform on tax compliance. We leverage a major progressive tax reform in a large Argentine municipality. First, we use a quasi-experimental design to estimate the causal effect of changes in a household's own tax rates on its tax compliance....

Inequality in access to high-quality teachers is an important driver of student socioeconomic achievement gaps. We experimentally evaluate a novel nation-wide low-cost government program aimed at reducing teacher sorting. Specifically, we tested two behavioral strategies designed to motivate...

This paper studies the effects of immigration on crime and crime perceptions in Chile, where the foreign-born population more than doubled in the last decade. By using individual-level victimization data, we document null effects of immigration on crime but positive and significant effects on...