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on Central and South America |
|
Issue of 2019‒07‒08
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Eduardo Levy Yeyati; Martín Montané; Luca Sartorio |
| Abstract: | All around the world, countries are spending in Active Labor Market Policies (ALMPs) to improve the probability of workers´ finding a job and improving their earnings. It is important to assess the evidence included in rigorous evaluations to know what works in terms of impact and cost effectiveness. We present the first systematic review of 102 interventions evaluated exclusively through Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) for a total of 652 estimated impacts. We find that (i) a third of these estimates are positive and statistical significant (PPS) at conventional levels (ii) programs are more likely to yield positive results when GDP growth is higher and unemployment is lower; (iii) programs that aim at building human capital, such as vocational training, independent worker assistance and wage subsidies show significant positive impact, and (iv) program length, monetary incentives, individualized follow up and activity targeting are all key features in determining the effectiveness the interventions. |
| Keywords: | vocational training, labor policies, wage subsidies, randomized controlled trials. |
| JEL: | J21 J48 E24 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:udt:wpgobi:wp_gob_2018_9&r=all |
| By: | Ramiro de Elejalde; Eugenio Giolito |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we study the effect on cesarean rates of a policy change in Chile that decreased the cost of delivery at private hospitals for women with public health insurance. Using a difference-indifferences (DID) approach based on the eligibility conditions for this benefit, we find that in the first three years after the policy took effect, deliveries in private hospitals increased by 8.7 percentage points, while the probability of a C-section being performed increased by 4.6 percentage points, with negative impacts on average newborn weight and size at birth. We show that the probability of an early term birth in hospitals participating in the program is an increasing function of expected hospital demand at the time of the full-term due date. This suggests that in the absence of price incentives, hospitals use C-sections to smooth out demand over time to optimize the use of their resources. |
| Keywords: | Health care, provider incentives, labor and delivery. |
| JEL: | I11 I13 I18 |
| Date: | 2019–06–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000518:017312&r=all |
| By: | Hartmann, Dominik; Jara-Figueroa, Cristian; Kaltenberg, Mary; Gala, Paulo |
| Abstract: | Social stratification is determined not only by income, education, race, and gender, but also by an individual's job characteristics and their position in the industrial structure. Utilizing a dataset of 76.6 million Brazilian workers and methods from network science, we map the Brazilian Industry- Occupation Space (BIOS). The BIOS measures the extent to which 600 occupations co-appear in 585 industries, resulting in a complex network that shows how industrial-occupational communities provide important information on the network segmentation of society. Gender, race, education, and income are concentrated unevenly across the core-periphery structure of the BIOS. Moreover, we identify 28 industrial occupational communities from the BIOS network structure and report their contribution to total income inequality in Brazil. Finally, we quantify the relative poverty within these communities. In sum, the BIOS reveals how the coupling of industries and occupations contributes to mapping social stratification. |
| Keywords: | labor markets,social structure,stratification,economic sociology,wages,inequality |
| JEL: | J31 L0 Z13 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:hohdps:062019&r=all |
| By: | Cesar Martinelli (Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science and Department of Economics, George Mason University); Marco Vega (Banco Central de Reserva del Peru and Universidad Catolica del Peru) |
| Abstract: | We apply synthetic control methods to study the long-term consequences of the interventionist and collectivist reforms implemented by the Peruvian military junta of 1968–1975. We compare long-term outcomes for the Peruvian economy following the radical reforms of the early 1970s with those of two controls made of similar countries, one chosen in the Latin American region and another one chosen from the world at large. We find that the economic legacy of the junta includes sizable loses in GDP along two decades, beyond those that can be attributed to adverse international circumstances. The evidence suggests that those loses can be attributed both to a decline in capital accumulation and to a fall in productivity. |
| Date: | 2019–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gms:wpaper:1071&r=all |