We explore how government fragmentation affects public education provision by examining the case of Chile, which created 11 municipalities between 1994 and 2004. Using territories that sought, but failed to, achieve independence as controls, we find that schools in newly created municipalities, on average, experienced a standard deviation decline of 0.2 in elementary school mathematics performance. In addition, fragmentation led to a high turnover and increased job insecurity of classroom teachers and school management teams in newly created municipalities.

In 1997, the Mexican government designed the conditional cash transfer program Progresa, which became the worldwide model of a new approach to social programs, simultaneously targeting human capital accumulation and poverty reduction. A large literature has documented the short and medium-term impacts of the Mexican program and its successors in other countries. Using Progresas experimental evaluation design originally rolled out in 1997-2000, and a tracking survey conducted 20 years later, this paper studies the differential long-term impacts of exposure to Progresa.

This paper analyzes how slum upgrading programs impact elementary school childrens attendance in Uruguay. We take advantage of the eligibility rule that deems slums eligible for a SUP program if they have 40 or more dwelling units. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity estimator, we find that students exposed to SUPs are 17 percent less likely to be at the 90th percentile of the yearly count of school absences. That effect appears to be driven by how SUPs impact girls. These interventions have effects that last for more than five years after their implementation.

We study the advantages, trade-offs, and challenges of employing a centralized rule to determine the allocation of teachers to schools. Data come from the centralized teacher assignment program in Ecuador, "Quiero ser Maestro," conducted by the Ministry of Education. Notably, in 2019 the program transitioned from a priority based algorithm to a strategy proof mechanism, similar to the change introduced in Boston in 2005 to assign students to schools.

Can taking the perspective of an out-group reduce prejudice and promote prosociality? Building on insights from social psychology, we study the case of Colombian natives and Venezuelan immigrants. We conducted an online experiment in which we randomly assigned natives to either play an online game that immersed them in the life of a Venezuelan migrant or to watch a documentary about Venezuelans crossing the border on foot.

This document compares three versions of the same home visiting model, the well-known Jamaica model, which was gradually scaled-up from an efficacy trial (proof of concept) in Jamaica, to a pilot in Colombia, to an at-scale program in Peru. It first describes the design, implementation and impacts of these three programs. Then, it analyzes the threats to scalability in each of these experiences and discusses how they could have affected program outcomes, with a focus on three of the elements of the economic model of scaling in Al-Ubaydli, et al.

How are natives attitudes towards migrants shaped by economic crises? Natives could show more compassion towards migrants as everyone faces a common threat. Alternatively, natives prejudice could rise as competition for scarce economic opportunities increases. We conduct an online survey to 3,400 Colombian citizens and randomly prime half of them to think about the economic consequences of COVID-19, before eliciting their altruism and attitudes towards Venezuelan migrants.

Evasion of labor market regulations in middle income countries is systemic. This is generally known as informality. In Latin America, where less than 50% of workers are registered with social security, this is a permanent phenomenon and encompasses a variety of economic realities ranging from subsistence self-employment to evasion of certain regulations including social security contributions. In this study we analyze the role of enforcement in curbing informality in large formal firms in Peru, where informality levels are around 70%.

In this article, we explore whether the evaluation instruments used to recruit teachers in the national teacher hiring process in Peru are good predictors of teacher effectiveness. To this end, we estimate teacher value-added (TVA) measures for public primary school teachers in 2018 and test for their correlation with the results of the 2015 and 2017 national evaluations.

Uruguay has increased it preschool enrollment, reaching almost universal coverage among four- and five-year-olds. However, more than a third of children enrolled in preschool programs have insufficient attendance, with absenteeism higher in schools in lower socioeconomic areas and among younger preschool children. This paper presents the results of a behavioral intervention to increase preschool attendance nationwide.