Showing 1 - 10 of 36
Total factor productivity (TFP) in Latin America has not increased relative to the US since the mid- 1970s, and in many countries it has declined. Moreover, resource misallocation can lower aggregate TFP. This paper presents evidence based on firm-level data from 10 Latin American countries to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013105413
The laws that regulate relations between firms and workers in Mexico distinguish sharply between salaried and non-salaried workers, and they are at the root of the existence of informality. This paper provides a clear definition of informality, distinguishing it from illegality. Using Mexico's...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013087889
This paper uses 113 household surveys from 18 Latin American countries to document patterns in secondary school graduation rates over the period 1990–2010. It is found that enrollment and graduation rates increased dramatically during that period, while dropout rates decreased. Two...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013071709
Schools that provide higher education often belong to either a merit-based selective system or an open-access less selective system. This paper presents the results of a field experiment that provided Grade 12 students in Chile with tailored information about financial aid and average earnings...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012958077
This paper reports the results of an experiment with secondary school students designed to improve their ability to reason, argument, and communicate using mathematics. These goals are at the core of many educational reforms. A structured pedagogical intervention was created that fostered a more...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013025927
We examine the long-term impacts of drought on local labor markets in Brazil. Using rainfall data going back over a century, we build contemporaneous and historical drought indices for more than 3,000 local areas, and examine them in conjunction with five waves of population census data spanning...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013061321
This paper shows that returns to education are not enough to capture all the returns to human capital. Using longitudinal data of all college graduates in Colombia, we estimate labor market returns to postsecondary degrees and to various skills— including literacy, numeracy, foreign language,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012832583
Personal income taxation remains relatively low in many developing countries despite recent democratic advancement and rapid economic growth; this is hard to reconcile with standard political economy models of taxation. This paper argues that the details of political institutions help to explain...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013117513
While economists have tended to focus on specific public policies when developing recommendations, the achievement of welfare objectives might depend more on the quality of policies than their content. This paper develops several measures of the qualities of policies across countries, arguing...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013126099
This paper introduces preliminary evidence from a cross-country database of policy characteristics and potential uses of that database. While most databases have emphasized either the content of policies (e. g. , size of government deficits) or countries' formal institutions (e. g. , political...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013126107