|
on Central and South America |
| By: | Pablo Castro (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Henry Willebald (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | This paper quantifies agricultural performance in Latin America in the early 20th century, complementing previous qualitative studies with a comparative and historical perspective. The analysis covers ten countries –Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela– during the years preceding World War I. We identify three broad agrarian paths. Argentina and Uruguay featured extensive, high-productivity, export-oriented systems that promoted broader economic development. Chile, Cuba, and Nicaragua exhibited more intensive but labour-demanding systems, with moderate productivity and uneven technological progress. Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Peru maintained low-productivity, traditional agriculture with limited potential for economic growth. These contrasting structures highlight the diversity of Latin American agrarian capitalism and help explain the uneven capacity of national economies to initiate structural transformation. Overall, differences in factor endowments played a decisive role in shaping productivity patterns, with land-abundant regions favouring labour-saving technologies. |
| Keywords: | agriculture, land productivity, labor productivity, Latin America |
| JEL: | N56 Q11 Q16 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-26-25 |
| By: | Muñoz, Ercio; Sansone, Dario; Tampellini Silva, Joao Pedro |
| Abstract: | Using census data from over 500, 000 dual-earner households in Mexico, we show that couples in which the wife earns just above half of the household income are far less common than those in which she earns just below that threshold a pattern that has been attributed to gender norms that create an aversion to wives outearning their husbands. This gap is two to five times larger than documented in the United States and Northern Europe and has grown over the 20002015 period. Unlike findings for the United States and Northern Europe, the discontinuity is not driven by equal earners, self-employed workers, or co-working couples, and persists across married and cohabiting couples, households with and without children, female-headed households, and couples where the wife is the older partner. Extending the analysis to Brazil and Panama, we find comparable patterns, establishing this as a regional rather than country-specific phenomenon. Among female same-sex couples in Mexico, we detect a similar discontinuity, whereas no consistent pattern emerges for male same-sex couples. Even when women are the primary earners, they continue to supply substantially more nonmarket labor than their male partners on average 36 more weekly hours and convergence in household production slows as the wife's income share rises further above the threshold. |
| Keywords: | Participación laboral femenidad;Parejas del mismo sexo;uso del tiempo |
| JEL: | D13 D91 J12 J15 J16 O15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14545 |
| By: | Frisancho, Veronica (CAF - Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, Buenos Aires, Argentina); Gallegos, Sebastian (Universidad Adolfo Ibañez); Gonzalez, Constanza (Universidad Adolfo Ibañez) |
| Abstract: | Do second chances at a high-stakes admission exam yield long-term gains? Leveraging fifteen years of Chilean administrative data and an RDD, we examine the causal effects of retaking on educational and labor market trajectories. Narrowly missing a preferred program cutoff triggers a 44% increase in retaking, leading to substantial score gains (0.27 SD) and improved placement and enrollment chances. However, these immediate gains do not persist. Retakers graduate at the same rate and from programs with similar earnings and employability profiles as their counterfactual peers. Our results suggest that retaking serves as a reshuffling mechanism yielding null net welfare gains. |
| Keywords: | high-stakes exams, college admissions, exam retaking, regression discontinuity, Chile, educational trajectories, labor market outcomes, centralized admission systems |
| JEL: | I23 I24 I28 J24 J62 N36 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18467 |
| By: | St'Anna, Pedro (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Sardoschau, Sulin (Humboldt University Berlin); Schmeisser, Aiko (Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | Empirical studies of racial wage disparities typically rely on self-reported race and treat racial categories as fixed. This paper shows that racial classification in the labor market is produced by social perception, and that modeling this process is essential for measuring wage gaps. We combine two large administrative data sets to construct three racial identity measures for 330, 000 workers in Brazil (2003-2015): employer classification, self-identification, and an algorithmic skin-tone measure. Self-identified and employer-ascribed race differ in over 20 percent of cases, and employers disagree about the same worker. We estimate a "race function" describing how employers map phenotypic cues, self-identification, education, and employment histories into racial categories. Holding skin tone constant, university graduates are substantially more likely to be perceived as White. Measured wage gaps vary across racial definitions, and accounting for perception meaningfully alters disparity estimates. We show that conventional approaches overstate the role of productivity differences in explaining racial wage gaps. |
| Keywords: | Race, identity, disparity, wage gap, Brazil |
| JEL: | J15 J50 J71 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18473 |