The report shows that there is good evidence that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have improved the lives of poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted to poor households, have raised consumption levels, and have reduced poverty, by a substantial amount in some countries....

Children regularly receiving health visits and education, the sick receiving proper and timely health care, safe water flowing out of the tap, electricity reliably reaching homes and businesses-these apparently simple events are taken for granted in developed countries. In Latin America, despite...

The paper is based on the premise that effective institutional reforms for service delivery require a carefully-considered institutional"fitting"process as opposed to transplantation of"international best practices."The paper asks how the specific institutional contexts of a given country limit...

The authors estimate returns to schooling in urban Argentina for a 10-year period. In addition to comparable earnings functions, they also estimate the returns using quantile regression analysis to detect differences in the returns across the distribution. Over time, men in higher quantiles have...

This paper analyzes the effect of a change in the minimum wage on the earnings of workers in the informal sector, who supposedly are not covered by minimum wage legislation. The standard view of the matter is that a reduction of the minimum wage, which increases employment in the formal sector,...

This paper selectively synthesizes much of the research on Latin American and Caribbean labor markets in recent years. Several themes emerge that are particularly relevant to ongoing policy dialogues. First, labor legislation matters, but markets may be less segmented than previously thought....

Improving governance is central to improving results in human development. It is clear that money is not enough: improved outcomes from service delivery require better governance, including mechanisms for holding service providers accountable and appropriate incentives for performance. There is...

Improving governance is central to improving results in human development. It is clear that money is not enough: improved outcomes from service delivery require better governance, including mechanisms for holding service providers accountable and appropriate incentives for performance. There is...