Papers Recibidos Nip Ba

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Guillermo Alves – Matías Brum – Mijail Desigualdad salarial en aumento: Yapor/ Uruguay 1986 – 2007. Instituto El rol de los cambios en las de Economía, características de los Universidad de la trabajadores República. Uruguay

The existence of Poverty Traps: Old Question - New Answer. Evidence from Rural Mexico

mail

[email protected];

Vera Chiodi Paris School of Economics & Poverty Action Lab J-PAL Europe [email protected] Paris School of Economics & Poverty Action Lab J-PAL Europe

Gabriel A. Madeira Assistant Professor Financial Crisis, Occupational and FIPE Researcher Gabriel Madeira Choice and Credit: Evidence from Department of [gabriel.madeira@gm Brazil Economics ail.com] University of Sao Paulo

guillermo@

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Assessing Ex Ante the Poverty and Distributional Impact of the Global Crisis in a Developing Country: A Microsimulation Approach with Country Study of Bangladesh

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The Mismatch between Income and Quality of Life: a study on the demographic and socioeconomic determinants of the performance of the objective and subjective quality of life indicators for Brazilian households

Bilal Habib, Ambar Narayan, Sergio [email protected] [csanc Olivieri and Carolina Sanchez-Paramo

Marcos Antonio Silveira Marcelo Sales Pessoa/ Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada

Marcos Antônio Coutinho da Silveira [marcos.silveira@ipea .gov.br]

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On The Distributional Implications of Climate Change: Hanan Jacoby, A Methodological Framework and Mariano Rabassa, Application to Emmanuel Skoufias Rural India

[email protected] [eskoufias@wo

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Hurricanes and labor market: a difference-in-difference approach Eduardo Oreggia for Mexico

Eduardo Oreggia [eduardo.oreggia@gm ail.com]

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¿Quiénes Pertenecen a la Clase Media en el Gran Buenos Aires?

Andres Ham

[email protected]

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Efects of Colombia's Social Protection System on Workers' Choice between Formal and Informal Employment

Adriana Camacho González

[email protected]

Skill Premium in Chile: Testing 10 the Skill Bias Technical Change Hypothesis in the South

Francisco Gallego

[email protected] ;

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Recent Trends in Income Inequality in Latin America

Leonardo Gasparini Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Leonardo Gasparini Laborales y Sociales [[email protected] (CEDLAS) ono.unlp.edu.ar] Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Leveling the Intra-household Playing Field: Ximena Del Carpio, 12 Compensation and Specialization Karen Macours in Child Labor Allocation

[email protected]

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Desigualdad de Ingresos y Ciclo Económico: Chile 1960-2008

Humberto Santos

Humberto Santos [humberto.santos@cp ce.cl]

Aggregate Economic Shocks and 14 Infant Mortality: New Evidence Marc-Francois Smitz [email protected] for Middle-Income Countries

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How Land Title Affects Child Labor ?

Measurement of Educational 16 Inequalities in the Argentine Public System

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Education Gini Coe cient in Argentina

Mauricio Jose Serpa Barros de Moura, IFCWorld Bank Group and George Mauricio Moura Washington [[email protected]] University Rodrigo De Losso da Silveira Bueno, EAESP-FGV

Cecilia Adrogue

Cecilia Adrogué [[email protected] ]

Corina María Paz Teran

corina paz [[email protected] u.ar]

Government and Household Responses To Macroeconomics 18 Shocks: Chile in the 1999 downturn

Household Characteristics and Nutrient Intake among 19 Argentinean children

LA GRAN RECUPERACIÓN: 20 ¿QUIÉN GANÓ Y POR QUÉ?

Julio Guzmán

Julio Guzman Cox [[email protected] ]

Eugenia Orlicki

[email protected] [eugeniaorl

Florencia Paz Cazzaniga

Florencia Paz Cazzaniga [[email protected] ]

The impact of school choice and public policy on 21 Gregory Elacqua student segregation: Evidence from Chile

[email protected]; gregory.e

A MEASURE OF QUALITY OF LIFE RELATED TO HEALTH BEFORE 22 Juan Rafael Vargas THE SHOCKS ON A VERY OPEN ECONOMY: COSTA RICA IN 2006

Juan Rafael Vargas [[email protected] m]

Perceptions of inequality and preferences for redistribution: 23 Theory and evidence from an experimental survey

Ricardo Nicolas Perez Truglia Ricardo Perez-Truglia [[email protected]. edu]

How do crises a ect schooling decisions? 24 Evidence from changing labor market opportunities

Lopez Boo, Florencia Florencia Lopez Boo [[email protected] g]

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Wage inequality: empirical evidence for Uruguay

A DYNAMIC MODEL OF EDUCATION LEVEL CHOICE: 26 APPLICATION TO BRAZILIAN STATES

Fernando Borraz

Fernando Borraz [[email protected]]

WILFREDO LEIVA MALDONADO

Wilfredo Maldonado [[email protected]]

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Why Don’t We See Poverty Convergence?

Determinants of Student 28 Achievements in Primary Education in Paraguay

THE DYNAMICS OF THE 29 BRAZILIAN INCOME 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Martin Ravallion

[email protected] [Mravallion@

Thomas Otter

Thomas Otter [[email protected]]

Erik Figueiredo

Erik Figueiredo [[email protected] om]

abstract

El incremento de la desigualdad de remuneraciones en el mercado de trabajo es una de las causas pr del aumento de la desigualdad de ingresos en Uruguay en los últimos veinte años. En el presente trab estudian sus determinantes, utilizando un enfoque de descomposición en efectos precio, característic residuos. La metodología es de desarrollo reciente a nivel internacional y no ha sido aplicada a Urugu basa en la obtención de distribuciones condicionales de los salarios para un set de características dad mediante la estimación de regresiones cuantílicas, que son luego integradas a lo largo de las caracter para obtener distribuciones contrafactuales incondicionales de los salarios. El principal aporte del estu resaltar el efecto concentrador de ciertos cambios en las características de los trabajadores para expl incremento de la desigualdad salarial en Uruguay. Entre estos cambios se cuentan el incremento de l de educación, la caída del empleo público o la caída del empleo manufacturero en beneficio del de se

This paper discusses the economics of poverty traps. In the micro-based literature, the underlying me associated with poverty are linked to informational and/or market failures and to indivisibilities in inve in human capital. These imperfections tend to affect the poor more severely due to their limited acces financial markets. A poverty trap arises when poor individuals are faced with two distinct equilibria. Th rests on the existence of increasing returns to assets. This paper employs a variety of empirical meth drawing on new evidence from the Mexican program, Oportunidades. Econometric analysis of asset d over 1997- 2006 identifies a threshold that signals that large numbers of Mexicans are indeed trapped a pathway out of poverty. We estimate the dynamic path of asset accumulation through a local smoot regression and obtain multiple equilibria. In order explore the heterogeneity across households, we in measure of the unobserved and intrinsic characteristics of the household and we redo the estimations results remain robust also when we carry parametric (as polinomial and spline regressions) and other parametric estimators (as FAN estimators and partial linear regressions). Finally, we run quantile regr and explore an alternative risk-coping strategy households may employ under risk.

What is the impact of macroeconomic crises on credit? Are wealthy and poor in- dividuals equally a¤e them? This paper accesses these questions looking at the macroeconomic instability (or crisis) that to in Brazil from 1997 to 1999. It veri…es if such instability produced e¤ects on the distribution of incom entrepreneurs and the probability of entrepreneurship that are consistent with more constrained and expensive credit. The analysis employs both reduced form and structural econometric techniques. Wh entrepreneurs are broadly de…ned as self employed individuals or employers, results for the whole po does not provide any clear evidence of e¤ects of the crisis on credit availability. However, when the a restricted to wealthier individuals or entrepreneurs are de…ned as employers, all results indicate mor constrained or more ex-pensive credit. These patherns are consistent with a credit crunch, but one th a¤ected mostly relatively large businesses and wealthy individuals.

Measuring the poverty and distributional impact of the global crisis for developing countries is not eas the multiple channels of impact and the limited availability of real-time data. Commonly-used approac of limited use in predicting impacts beyond aggregate statistics like poverty rates, for example in add questions like who are being affected and by how much, and who are vulnerable to falling into povert crisis deepens? This paper develops a simple microsimulation method, modifying models from existin economic literature, to measure the poverty and distributional impact of macroeconomic shocks by lin macro projections with pre-crisis household data. The approach is then applied to Bangladesh to asse potential impact of the slowdown on poverty and income distribution across different groups and regi validation exercise using past data from Bangladesh finds that the model generates projections that c well with actual estimates from household data. The results can inform the design of crisis monitoring and policies in Bangladesh, and also illustrate the kind of analysis that is possible in other developing with similar data availability. This paper is part of a broader research program to cover, in addition to Bangladesh, Mexico, Egypt, and the Philippines. This paper uses an ordered logit model to investigate the demographic and socioeconomic determinants of the performance of a set of partial life quality indicators for Brazilian households, which are built from the information provided by the 2002- 2003 wave of the Brazilian Ho Budgetary Survey. Very important, many of these indicators have a subjective content as they measu degree of the household satisfaction with some important aspects of its living conditions. The study emphasizes the comparative analysis between the effects of current income and permanent income o quality of life indicators. In this aspect, it turns out that the estimated effect of permanent shocks to c income is stronger than that of temporary shocks. Another relevant result is the limited explanation p income and consumption to the indicators performance, notwithstanding their significant estimated m effects. This result is consistent with the international empirical evidence of a mismatch between obje subjective life quality indicators, which can be explained to some extent by differences in expectation perceived relative income among households. The inclusion of an exhaustive number of explanatory v into the model – in addition to income and consumption – increases the explanatory power, but not to enough extent to produce a satisfactory adjustment to the data. This fact suggests the existence of so of non-observed heterogeneity explaining a considerable part of the performance quality of life indica the Brazilian households.

Climate change will severely depress productivity in developing country agriculture, a sector upon wh of the worlds poor depend. Though a large literature attempts to quantify the economic costs to agric a whole, there has been little, if any, efort to understand how these potential losses will be distributed households and how the poor will fare in particular. In this paper, we present a methodological framew tracing out the consequences of climate change for poverty and income distribution in the rural econo propose a two step approach, first estimating the impact of climate on the returns to land and labor, constructing, from these returns and household baseline characteristics, a counterfactual measure of household income (consumption) under alternative climate change scenarios.

Hurricanes are becoming frequent phenomena in some area of Latin America, and especially in Mexico, affecting both side of the country. Hurricanes introduce shock to the local labor markets, and the impact may differ according to the skill level. Using hurricanes hit as an exogenous shock and with microdata from 32 metropolitan areas in Mexico, we analyze for different hurricanes impact what is the effect on the returns for skill levels. Results show that the impact seems to be mostly positive when there is a first impact and in areas more touristic, while in other areas the effect is not conclusive.

Este trabajo busca caracterizar a la clase media en la ciudad de Buenos Aires siguiendo la metodología utilizada en Banerjee y Duflo (2007). Esto implica subdividir a la población en clases según su nivel de consumo. Para este propósito, es idónea la utilización de la Encuesta Nacional de Gastos de los Hogares (ENGH). El análisis se centra en dos objetivos principales. Primero, caracterizar profundamente a los hogares e individuos pertenecientes a la clase media del Gran Buenos Aires (CABA y Conurbano), a partir de los microdatos de la ENGH 1996/1997. En segundo luga presenta un análisis de la evolución de dicha clase y de su respuesta ante la severa crisis que enfrent Argentina entre 2001-2002. Para ello, se hace uso de la ENGH 2004/2005, la cual se dispone para CAB principales resultados indican que la clase media comprende el 40% de los hogares en la región, part que se redujo tras la crisis y causó ajustes en los patrones de gasto de esas familias.

por favor ver paper por que no se puede copiar abstract

por favor ver paper por que no se puede copiar abstract

This paper documents patterns and recent developments on income inequality in Latin America (LA). comparative international evidence confirms that LA is a region of high inequality, although maybe no highest in the world. Income inequality has fallen in the 2000s, suggesting a turning point from the su increases of the 1980s and 1990s. The fall in inequality is significant and widespread, but it does not be based on strong fundamentals.

This paper analyzes changes in the allocation of child labor within the household in reaction to exogen shocks created by a social program in Nicaragua. The paper shows that households that randomly rec conditional cash transfer compensated for some of the intra-household differences, as they reduce child labor more for older boys who used to work more and for boys that w further behind in school. The results also show that households that randomly received a productive investment grant targeted at women, in addition to the basic conditional cash transfer benefits, show increased specialization of older girls in nonagricultural and domestic work, but no overall increase in child labor. The findings suggest that time allocation and specialization patterns in child labor within t household are important factors to understand the impact of a social program.

La relación entre las variables macroeconómicas y la distribución del ingreso ha sido ampliamente est alrededor del mundo (Shultz (1969); Metcalf (1969); Beach (1977); Blinder y Esaki (1978); Buse (1982 y Blinder (1985); Nolan (1989); Blejer y Guerrero (1990); Bjorklund (1991); Silber y Zilberfarb (1994); (1994) y Mocan (1995,1999)). Dichas investigaciones difieren principalmente en los datos y la especif utilizada, pero en términos generales han consistido en estimar regresiones entre la fracción del ingre que posee cada quintil, o medidas agregadas de desigualdad como por ejemplo el Coeficiente de Gini conjunto de variables independientes que miden los ciclos económicos, principalmente la tasa de des la inflación.

We provide country-specific estimates of the effect of macroeconomic shocks on infant mortality for a of mainly middle-income countries. In most countries, infant mortality appears to be procyclical or acy Only when shocks to GDP are very deep, 15 percent or larger, are they consistently associated with h mortality.

Secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development. However, evaluat the causal effects of land titling is a difficult task. Since 2004, the Brazilian government, through a pro called "Papel Passado", has issued titles to more than over 85,000 families and has the goal to reach Another topic in public policy, that is crucial for developing economies is child labor force participation Brazil, about 5.4 million children and teenagers between 5 and 17 years old are working full time. This examines the direct impact of securing a property title on child labor force participation. In order to is causal role of ownership security, this study uses a comparison between two close and similar commu the City of Osasco case (a town with 650,000 people in the São Paulo metropolitan area). The key poi case is that some units participate in the program and others do not. One of them, Jardim Canaã, rece titles in 2007; the other, Jardim DR, given fiscal constraints, will not be part of the program until 2012 that reason became the control group. Estimates, generated using difference-in-difference econometr technique suggest that titling results in a substantial decrease in child labor force participation for the that received the title compared with the others. This findings are relevant for future policy tools for d with informality and how it affects economic growth.

This paper is focused on the quantification of the educational inequality at the public elementary leve Argentina using different measures to study the subject. As motivation, we start by presenting the co of variation of the quality of the schools which is not irrelevant since it is between 0.10 and 0.25 when generally used as a benchmark. The Theil index is then offered to provide a decomposition of the ineq found, since it allows separating the inequality between and within the provinces, the governmental u ordered to finance primary education; the results obtained show that more than 84% of inequality is d differences within the jurisdictions. Last but not least, regression based measures and the concentrati are used to search for unfair situations, by analyzing the relationship existing between the educationa and factors socially considered unacceptable. In this sense, the results showed that in most cases the positive association which indicates the lack of equality of educational opportunities.

What do we know about inequality in educational attainment across Argentina's provinces? To answer this question we present the Education Gini coe cient for the ve-year period 20022007. We also applied a decomposition analysis that captures gender gap's contribution to overall educational inequality. Using microdata, we document the following main results. First, educational Gini has declined in almost all provinces. Second, although there are no important di erences in average years of schooling across provinces, high disparities exist with respect to education Gini. Buenos Aires City shows an advantage position, especially in relation to the Northeast region of the country, and particularly Posadas city.

This paper descriptively examines the private coping mechanisms and the government policy respons adopted in Chile during the downturn that began in 1998-1999. The crisis arose as a result of several shocks. However, there is evidence that the adjustment policy response to the crisis exacerbated the the 1998 external shocks. The inability to achieve a balanced mix of monetary and fiscal policies, in conjunction with some inflexibility in labor markets, resulted in a costly adjustment, with high and per unemployment. However, fiscal discipline and the strong public institutions developed before the crisi alleviated the impact of the downturn in comparison to the other affected countries in the LAC region. increase in the labor force participation of household members (other than the head) appears to be on private coping mechanisms used during the crisis. The government adopted a mix of direct and indire mployment programs that are still operative. There are some institutional factors and administrative limitations that influenced the particular response adopted. Although the recovery of employment has evident and the economic situation has notably improved, the government has maintained and even employment programs during 2004-2005. This expands the discussion towards the ideal design of pu employment programs for Chile, in the context of a permanent safety net policy.

To examine nutrient intake among Argentinean children, we used OLS and quantile regression -a met suited for characterizing the entire distribution of intake. The dietary data were obtained from the Nat Survey on Nutrition and Health (2005). The results suggest that the OLS method gives an incomplete the responsiveness of the nutrition intake because for key household characteristics such as income, education of household head, household size and food assistance program participation, the marginal at the tails of the intake distribution of some nutrients are often quite different from those at the mea has important implications for targeting nutrition promotion programs and expenditures.

El objetivo de este trabajo es identificar las características de aquellos hogares argentinos que permit su bienestar mejore más que el promedio de la sociedad en el proceso de expansión macroeconómico acaecido entre 2003 y 2007. A partir de datos de panel provenientes de la Encuesta Permanente de H para el período bajo estudio, encontramos que aquellos hogares con una mayor proporción de miemb ocupados, cuyo jefe de hogar es mujer, joven y empleado permanentemente en el sector privado y es situados en la Patagonia pudieron aprovechar mejor las oportunidades que les brindó la macroeconom

ver paper, no hay abstract

The Costa Rican economy is on the intermediate level within the countries included in the comparison is hoped the results could bring about interest among the policy-makers and other agents related to n health system, in order to deepen and broaden their action to reach public policies geared toward hea welfare improvements. The situation of the poor people is a major concern. Furthermore, it should h explaining the behavior of health perception held by Costa Ricans and their differences by age and ge

Do individuals have biased perceptions of inequality, and systematically perceive that they are poorer than they actually are? Does this potential bias affect attitudes towards edistributive policies? Could information about their real position in the income distribution modify these attitudes? We study the relationship between perceptions of inequality, based on the subjective evaluation of an individual’s p the income distribution, her real position in the distribution, and her preferences for redistribution. Wh previous studies have concentrated either on the presence of biases in subjective evaluations of relat being, or on inequality and preferences for redistribution, the contribution of this paper is to bridge th issues by studying the relationship between these biases and preferences for redistribution. The pape presents a theoretical model that explains how systematic biases in the self-perception of income ran arise. The theoretical model suggests that poor (rich) people tend to overestimate (underestimate) th relative income and underestimate (overestimate) social welfare, and that such misperceptions transl biases in preferences for redistribution. Finally, we present some results from the Survey on Inequality Perceptions and Redistribution, which was designed specifically to test the implications of this model.

This paper examines the e ect of labor market opportunities on schooling-employment decisions in 12 areas in Argentina over 12 years, emphasizing the recession/crisis years 1998-2002. The efects of macroeconomic swings on schooling decisions are examined with a focus on whether the income or substitution e ect dominates as macroeconomic conditions change. I demonstrate that over \typical" y deteriorating job rates increase the probability of attending school and ecrease the probability of com work and school, particularly for boys. After controlling for household and individual characteristics I the probability of being in school for secondary school children was about 6 percentage points higher than in 1998 (before the recession started). In fact, a 10percent decrease in the job rate alone has be responsible for a 5.4 percentage point rise in the probability of school attendance since 2000. This sub e ect becomes positive in 2002. These estimates allow for the fact that a new Federal Education Law ( 1996 extended mandatory education to 10 years and might have a ected schooling outcomes.

Since the end of the nineties, like in most of the Latin American Countries, Uruguay has observed a tr toward inequality. In order to explain the increasing inequality, prior research focused on several topi trade openness and market labor policies (like minimum wage reduction or a tax reform) in the last de We analyze the impact of the increase in the minimum wage for the period 2004-2005 (in where the m wage increase 82% in real terms) on the wage distribution by applying the DiNardo, Fortín and Lemie parametric approach. We do not find significant effect of the increase of the minimum wage. The counterfactual distribution, that is, the wage distribution if no increase in the minimum wage is observ similar to the actual one. To analyze whether exist “employment effect” we follow the procedure sugg Stewart (2004) and Stewart and Swaffield (2006), which consists of a difference-in-difference estimato on propensity score matching. We find a negative employment effect form males living outside of the Montevideo.

An empirical analysis of the education/wage curve in the Brazilian states shows the S-shape of that fu When introducing that function in a dynamic programming problem of school choice, a non-concave p arises and we find multiplicity of stationary state equilibria. Some of them are unstable but others pre local stability. This may explain the persistence of several education levels in the long run of the econ also analyze the sensitivity of these stationary states to changes in the cost of education. We do this t evaluate the impact of changes in the wage structure of public educational policies.

We are not seeing faster progress against poverty amongst the poorest developing countries. Yet this implied by widely accepted “stylized facts” about the development process. The paper tries to explain missing from those stylized facts. Consistently with models of economic growth incorporating borrowi constraints, the analysis of a new data set for 100 developing countries reveals an adverse effect on consumption growth of high initial poverty incidence at a given initial mean. A high incidence of pove entails a lower subsequent rate of progress against poverty at any given growth rate (and poor countr to experience less steep increases in poverty during recessions). Thus, for many poor countries, the g advantage of starting out with a low mean (“conditional convergence”) is lost due to their high povert The size of the middle class—measured by developing-country, not Western, standards—appears to b important channel linking current poverty to subsequent growth and poverty reduction. However, high inequality is only a handicap if it entails a high incidence of poverty relative to mean consumption.

This paper addresses the question: Why and how does an education system fail to provide its student quality education? In order to get answers, schools are one of the first places to look for. In Paraguay quality is not constrained by the amount of expenditure because the country is spending a larger shar than other Latin American countries and teachers’ salary levels or expenditure per student are also ov Latin American average. However, qualifications of teachers, their performance in classroom, quality o textbooks and materials and motivational aspects of pupil seem to set up a mix which drives to poor educational quality. We propose to estimate the impact of the different vectors on schooling achievem (Glewwe and Kremer, 2005) as a whole and in a second approach via quantile estimations (quantiles o of achievements). Quantile regressions will indicate whether each explanatory variable’s changes alon score’s distribution or not. Learning achievement indexes can be ranked by school stratification. If we we are able to analyze to what extent the differentiation by schools and by socio-economic sectors co to score’s inequality. To do that, we use an inequality measure, traditionally used to measure income inequality. Regarding inequality we find that improving the impact of our selected variables would hav positive effect on scores and additionally reduce inequality if this happens for low income quantiles bu higher ones.

This paper aims to measure the degree of income mobility in Brazil in the 1987-2005 period. To achie we consider the axiomatic mobility approach and the dynamic tool suggested by Aebi et al. (1999). Th transition probability matrix calculations and the mobility index indicate that Brazil has low intragener income mobility, suggesting that Brazilian social structure is relatively rigid.

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