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on Central and South America |
| By: | Albornoz, Facundo; Almeyda, Gonzalo; Lombardi, María; Oubiña, Victoria; Zoido, Pablo |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of a randomized one-on-one remote phone tutoring program implemented between 2021 and 2023. The intervention reached more than seven thousand students in seven Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay and Peru. The program targeted students with low initial learning levels and focused on foundational numeracy skills using a differentiated instruction approach. We find that assignment to tutoring increased student test scores by 0.2 SD. Tutoring benefited all students, with no differential effects by gender, age, socioeconomic status, or baseline scores. Students who initially reported having difficulty with concentration or memory experienced larger average effects. Finally, we find that students with lower initial performance exhibited larger improvements in more basic mathematical operations, whereas those with better performance at baseline saw larger gains in more complex operations. This underscores the importance of offering differentiated instruction based on students initial performance. |
| Keywords: | remote tutoring;Foundational skills;Differentiated instruction;learning outcomes;Educational disparities |
| JEL: | I20 I24 O15 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14342 |
| By: | Mariano Bosch (Inter American Development Bank); Guillermo Cruces (Universidad de San Andrés-CONICET, University of Nottingham); Stephanie González (CEDLAS-FCE-UNLP); María Teresa Silva-Porto (Inter American Development Bank) |
| Abstract: | In developing countries, informal labor is not only employed by illegal or unregistered firms but also by legal firms that hire workers informally, known as the intensive margin of labor informality. Reducing this type of work may have ambiguous effects on formal employment, depending on factors such as firm size and productivity. In collaboration with Peru’s labor inspection authority, we conducted a randomized mailing experiment targeting large firms with a high propensity for employing workers informally. The authority sent letters with either deterrence messages detailing fines for non-compliance or social norms messages highlighting the positive impacts of formality. We analyzed the impact of this intervention on formal employment levels over the following two years using monthly administrative data. The treated firms (particularly those in the deterrence treatment arm) and larger firms increased their formal employment levels. However, these increases followed a seasonal pattern coinciding with the high labor demand during the tourist season, suggesting that prior to the intervention, firms were employing temporary workers informally. The higher perceived cost of non-compliance led them to formalize some of these workers. The informal hiring of seasonal workers by these firms appears to have been motivated by basic tax evasion, and the absence of a negative effect on firm-level formal employment indicates that the firms were exploiting rents from low enforcement of regulations. |
| Keywords: | Randomized Controlled Trial, Social Security, Tax Audit, Tax Evasion, Mailing, Informality, Labor formalization |
| JEL: | C93 D91 H55 J46 O17 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sad:wpaper:172 |
| By: | Ivan Albina (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP); Zara Contractor (Middlebury College); Germán Reyes (Middlebury College and IZA) |
| Abstract: | Generative AI is transforming higher education, yet systematic evidence on student adoption remains limited. Using novel survey data from a selective U.S. college, we document over 80 percent of students using AI academically within two years of ChatGPT’s release. Adoption varies across disciplines, demographics, and achievement levels, highlighting AI’s potential to reshape educational inequalities. Students predominantly use AI for augmenting learning (e.g., explanations, feedback), but also to automate tasks (e.g., essay generation). Positive perceptions of AI’s educational benefits strongly predict adoption. Institutional policies can influence usage patterns but risk creating unintended disparate impacts across student groups due to uneven compliance. |
| JEL: | I21 O33 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0359 |
| By: | Mayer Gukovas, Renata |
| Abstract: | Skill transferability is essential for occupational mobility and adapting to external shocks, yet detailed data on workers’ skills is often scarce and costly to collect, specially in developing countries. This paper explores whether the American O*NET database, one of the most popular databases used in studies on occupational skills, can provide relevant insights in the Brazilian context. By complementing it with unique longitudinal administrative Brazilian employer-employee data, this paper validates the application of skill similarity measures in a country lacking data on workers’ skills. Applying the same methodology produces results in Brazil comparable to those in the American literature, and further refining the similarity measure increases its power to explain occupational mobility in the country. Then, this paper uses the validated measure to analyze the role of skill transferability in explaining Brazilian mobility patterns, exploring heterogeneity across different genders, age groups, and education levels. |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J62 O15 O54 |
| Date: | 2025–10–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2025024 |
| By: | Derenoncourt, Ellora (Princeton University); Gerard, Francois (Queen Mary, University of London); Lagos, Lorenzo (Brown University); Montialoux, Claire (UC Berkeley) |
| Abstract: | How do minimum wages affect informality? We study the near-doubling of the real minimum wage from 2000 to 2009 in Brazil, where 46% of the workforce is informal. Using labor force surveys covering the informal sector, we show the minimum wage exhibits near full passthrough to informal employees working in formal firms, about half of all informal employees. The formal-to-informal reallocation elasticity with respect to the formal wage is small: -0.28. Our findings illustrate how minimum wages can positively affect living standards for workers thought beyond the reach of labor law, a sizable share of the workforce in developing economies. |
| Keywords: | informality, minimum wages, inequality |
| JEL: | J23 J46 J88 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18234 |