The Colombian 2012 tax reform reduced payroll taxes and employer contributions to health insurance by 13.5%, while also increasing corporate income taxes, and leaving untouched the benefits to workers financed through these taxes. Shifting taxation from formal employment to other business activities is a policy recipe under heated discussion in Latin America. In this context, the reform offers an ideal laboratory to study empirically the potential distortions against formal employment associated with payroll taxes in contrast to other taxes to firms.

We study the determinants of math achievement among children in early elementary school using data from a unique experiment. We find steep socioeconomic gradients and a substantial boy-girl gap in math test scores. However, among children of mothers with university education, there is no difference in the math achievement of girls and boys, which suggests that maternal education specifically, and home environments generally, are important.

Teachers vary considerably in their effectiveness, but identifying teacher characteristics that predict their impact on learning outcomes has been elusive. We analyze a teacher evaluation that is used to make teacher tenure decisions in Ecuador. The evaluation includes a written test, a demonstration class, and a points system that gives higher scores to teachers with more experience, degrees, and in-service training. We find no evidence that children taught by teachers with higher scores on the evaluation learn more.

This paper presents new data documenting the cost of salaried labor in 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries. We gather data on the three main costs associated to hiring salaried labor; (i) minimum wages and other monetary benefits, (ii) mandated contributions for social insurance and other benefits and (iii) job security provisions. We present two new indicators. First, we calculate the average non-wage cost of salaried labor (NWC).

This paper presents new data documenting the cost of salaried labor in 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries. We gather data on the three main costs associated to hiring salaried labor; (i) minimum wages and other monetary benefits, (ii) mandated contributions for social insurance and other benefits and (iii) job security provisions. We present two new indicators. First, we calculate the average non-wage cost of salaried labor (NWC).

We study the impact of welfare payments in Ecuador on the probability that women and men work, and on whether they are employed in the formal or informal sectors. Our analysis is based on two distinct identification strategies and two separate sources of data spanning more than 10 years. We find no evidence that welfare discouraged work.

We study the effects of conditional cash transfers to pregnant women on stillbirths and child survival in Bolivia. Payments are conditional on compliance with medically recommended prenatal care and skilled birth attendance. At a value equivalent to just 1% of monthly household consumption, the payments are the smallest amongst national cash transfer programs in Latin America.

In an effort to boost student achievement and reduce income-based gaps, the Chilean government passed the Preferential School Subsidy Law (SEP) in 2008, which altered the nation’s 27-year-old universal school-voucher system dramatically. Implementation of SEP increased the value of the school voucher by 50 percent for “priority students”, primarily those whose family incomes fell within the bottom 40 percent of the national distribution.

Improving learning among low-achieving students is a challenge in education. We present results from the first randomized experiment of an inquiry-based remedial science education program for low-performing elementary students in a developing-country setting. Third-grade students in 48 low-income public elementary schools in Metropolitan Lima who score at the bottom half of their school distribution in a science test taken at the beginning of the school year are randomly assigned to receive up to 16 remedial science tutoring sessions of 90 minutes each.

The paper provides reliable estimates of the impact of recertification on ineligible households from Colombia's Familias en Acción, an antipoverty programme, relying on a regression discontinuity design. We find that exclusion is associated with a reversal of welfare, education attainment, and economic inclusion. The findings are unsurprising when set against expectations from theory and evidence on the impact of social transfer receipt, but have far reaching implications for the design and implementation of exit conditions.