Reducing Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean

Poverty, Latin American, Caribbean

Generalizing the Causal Effect of Fertility on Female Labor Supply

Abstract We study the effect of fertility on labor supply in Argentina and Mexico exploiting a source of exogenous variability in family size first introduced by Angrist and Evans (1998) for the United States. Our results constitute the first external validation of the estimates obtained for the US. External validation of empirical results is central to the making of rigorous science, but there are very few attempts to establish it. We find that the estimates for the US can be generalized both qualitatively and quantitatively to the populations of two developing countries where, compared to the US, fertility is known to be higher, female education levels are much lower and there are fewer facilities for childcare.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40011/2/wp625.pd

Social Status and Corruption

We study the interaction between social and economic incentives in determining the level of corruption. Using social rewards as incentives for civil servants may help to reduce corruption. In our model, a decrease in corruption produces an externality that reduces the cost of hiring civil servants. In particular, it makes wage schemes which avert corruption (efficiency wages) cheaper. We show that the existence of this externality reduces the ?optimal? level of corruption in a society, the greater the power of social status, the lower the level of corruption.Fil: Galiani, Sebastian. Washington University in St. Louis; Estados UnidosFil: Weinschelbaum, Federico. Universidad de San Andrés; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Generalizing the Causal Effect of Fertility on Female Labor Supply

We study the effect of fertility on labor supply in Argentina and Mexico exploiting a source of exogenous variability in family size first introduced by Angrist and Evans (1998) for the United States. Our results constitute the first external validation of the estimates obtained for the US. External validation of empirical results is central to the making of rigorous science, but there are very few attempts to establish it. We find that the estimates for the US can be generalized both qualitatively and quantitatively to the populations of two developing countries where, compared to the US, fertility is known to be higher, female education levels are much lower and there are fewer facilities for childcare.Fertility, labor supply, causality, instrumental variables

Property Rights for the Poor: Effects of Land Titling

Secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development. The evaluation of the causal effects of land titling, however, is a difficult task as the allocation of property rights is typically endogenous. We exploit a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles to overcome this identification problem. More than twenty years ago, a group of squatters occupied a piece of land in a poor suburban area of Buenos Aires. When the Congress passed a law expropriating the land from the former owners with the purpose of entitling it to the occupants, some of the original owners accepted the government compensation, while others are still disputing the compensation payment in the slow Argentine courts. These different decisions by the former owners generated an allocation of property rights that is exogenous in equations describing the behavior of the squatters. We find that entitled families increased housing investment, reduced household size, and improved the education of their children relative to the control group. However, effects on credit access are modest and there are no effects on labor income.

Fertility and Female Labor Supply in Latin America: New Causal Evidence

We study the effect of fertility on maternal labor supply in Argentina and Mexico exploiting a source of exogenous variability in family size first introduced by Angrist and Evans (1998) for the United States. We find that the estimates for the US can be generalized both qualitatively and quantitatively to the populations of two developing countries where, compared to the US, fertility is known to be higher, female education levels are much lower and there are fewer formal facilities for childcare.

Land-Rich Economies, Education and Economic Development

We analyze the emergence of large-scale education systems in a setup where growth is associated with changes in the configuration of the economy. The model is based on three central elements: first, individual preferences over consumption goods generate changes in the composition of individual spending as income grows, embodied in Engel curves. Second, the production of sophisticated services is intensive in human capital. Third, investment in human capital by individual households faces borrowing constraints. Our model uses an overlapping generation framework similar to the one in Galor and Moav (2003). As that paper does, we also model the incentives that the economic ´elite may have (collectively) to accept taxation destined to finance the education of credit-constrained workers. In our model this incentive does not necessarily arise from a complementarity between physical and human capital in manufacturing. Rather, we emphasize the demand for human-capital-intensive services by high-income groups. The argument model seems capable to account for salient features of the development of Latin America in the 19th century, where, in particular, land-rich countries such as Argentina established an extensive public education system and a sophisticated service sector before developing significant manufacturing activities.

Duration and Risk of Unemployment in Argentina

After a decade of structural reforms, unemployment rates have tripled in Argentina. This paper is concerned with the measurement of unemployment risk and its distribution. We show the importance of considering re-incidence in the measurement of unemployment risk and develop a methodolgy to do that. Our estimates for Argentina show that, though the typical unemployment spell is short, once re-incidence is taken into account, unemployment risk is high, has risen substantially in the last decade and is shared very unequally in the labor force. This counters the established view that unemployment is a small risk, short-duration phenomenon, which arises when re-incidence is not considered.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39861/3/wp476.pd

Giving Children a Better Start: Preschool Attendance & School-Age Profiles

We study the effect of pre-primary education on children's subsequent school outcomes by exploiting a unique feature of the Uruguayan household survey (ECH) that collects retrospective information on preschool attendance in the context of a rapid expansion in the supply of preprimary places. Using a within household estimator, we find small gains from preschool attendance at early ages that magnify as children grow up. By age 15, treated children have accumulated 0.8 extra years of education and are 27 percentage points more likely to be in school compared to their untreated siblings. Instrumental variables estimates that control for non random selection of siblings into pre-school lead to similar results. We speculate that early grade repetition harms subsequent school progression and that pre-primary education appears as a successful policy option to prevent early grade failure and its long lasting consequences.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57240/1/wp860 .pd