Facultad de Economía

La Facultad de Economía lo invita al Seminario de Investigación
Does Free Childcare Improve Mothers' Careers? Evidence from São Paulo

Abstract:

Despite the extensive literature on the effect of childcare on mothers' labor market outcomes, evidence in developing countries is still limited. This paper estimates the impact of a rapid expansion of public childcare on mothers' careers in the city of Sao Paulo. We leverage the rollout and expansion of childcare facilities, coupled with detailed data on the labor market and household characteristics to identify effects on mothers' labor force participation and earnings. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we compare the child penalty in districts that experienced a large and rapid expansion of childcare with districts with no significant expansion. Our results show that an additional seat per child leads to an increase in mothers' formal employment after the first child's birth and an increase of one month's minimum wage on yearly earnings. Effects are stronger for migrants, educated mothers and in areas with more women as household heads. We do not detect any effect of this expansion on mothers-to-be or fathers.

La Comisión de la Verdad, la Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz y el Human Rights Data Analysis Group trabajaron conjuntamente en el proyecto de datos y derechos humanos más grande del mundo hasta la fecha. Un año después de la publicación del Informe Final de la Comisión de la Verdad, estos datos se publicaron como un aporte a la construcción de paz y verdad. Los y las invitamos a una sesión para conocer los datos, el proceso estadístico detrás de ellos y su uso correcto. Este taller contextualizará brevemente el proyecto y tocará temas como la imputación estadística de campos faltantes para las víctimas registradas y la estimación de las víctimas que nadie registró, así como una introducción a un paquete de R que facilita el uso de los datos.

We show that the quality of police hires varies over the business cycle. Officers hired when the unemployment rate is high have fewer complaints, disciplines, and are less likely to be fired than officers hired when the unemployment rate is low. Effects are larger for younger workers who have weaker outside options in recessions. We find that the size and quality of the applicant pool increases in high unemployment years–more people take entry exams and a smaller fraction fail the exam. Our findings shed light on how outside options affect police hires and speak to policy questions about police recruitment.

This paper examines schools' effects on college outcomes in Peru, a country without a high school exit standardized test, relate to school reputation and school value-added on learning. We first estimate the impact of selective public exam schools on college outcomes using an RDD around the admission cutoffs. Despite little evidence of gains in learning, graduating from these schools improves college applications, admissions, and enrollment, especially at top private universities. We provide evidence that this result is partially explained by selective exam schools serving as a signal about applicants' abilities. The effects are similar for other signals, such as marginally obtaining the IB diploma. We next estimate and validate school value-added on college outcomes for all high schools in Peru. Consistent with the exam school effects, school gains on test scores are not predictive of effects on college outcomes after controlling for average high school graduates' characteristics. These results are consistent with distortions in the transition from high school to higher education due to information frictions.

This paper uses a dynamic Roy model and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to analyze the decision to pursue two-year or four-year college choices and estimate their associated net value. In this model, the net value varies across three dimensions of abilities: cognitive, socio-emotional, and mechanical, which are estimated using a measurement system. I focus on characterizing the average individual who would conclude that there was a schooling path different from the one she chose, that would have led to higher net value. This classification is derived from comparing simulated net values, which consider potential earnings and costs, associated with each schooling path. The results provide valuable insights into the implications of credit constraints and regional characteristics on achieving the highest net value. In particular, short- and long-term credit constraints are important factors preventing people from achieving the highest net value as four-year graduates. Moreover, four-year and high school graduates finding higher net value in a two-year degree are more likely to come from and live in rural areas. Finally, there is evidence of a strong sorting for the cognitive and mechanical abilities but only weak sorting for the socioemotional ability.

Our study provides a comprehensive analysis of the effects of a debt moratorium policy that suspends payments during stress episodes. We offer theoretical predictions based on demand and supply elasticities, which suggest that non-stressed firms will experience a rise in loan rates while stressed firms will see a rise in loan amounts. To empirically test these predictions, we use administrative data from Colombia and conduct a regression discontinuity design that compares loans that barely met the treatment criteria with loans that barely missed it. Our analysis also examines how real variables such as investment and labor are affected by the policy. Finally, we use a quantitative default model to provide insights into  short- and long-term gains and losses of debt moratorium policies. In particular, we show large welfare gains if the policy is designed to include the foregoing of interest accumulation during stress episodes.

Millions of people are internally displaced by wars and conflicts with wide-ranging adverse social and economic consequences. Yet, we still know very little about how they fare upon return to their homes. Colombia’s 50-year internal armed conflict resulted in the world’s highest number of internally displaced people. In this paper, we study the effects of a recently implemented law allowing displaced Colombians to apply to receive land restitution. Although everyone could apply for restitution immediately, the implementation of claims happened in a phased manner. Using agricultural census data coupled with geospatial location of formal land restitution, and individual level information on applications, we shed light on the effect of land restitution on three sets of outcomes: social integration, labour investments and market integration. Our results suggest restituted households are integrating into the community - they are more likely to be a member of an association, more likely to partake in reciprocal farm work and sell their produce. We also find evidence that in the short run, unlike the findings in the literature relating to land formalisation, restituted households are not more likely to hire permanent workers but instead increase the use of day workers and household members on their land.

Despite being generally inefficient, price controls are often imposed by policy makers and tend to be popular in opinion polls. We conducted a laboratory experiment to study consumers’ support for a price cap in a competitive commodity market. We focused on two potential determinants of such support: (1) information about the impact of a price cap on market outcomes, and (2) consumers’ lack of direct responsibility for policy decisions, which provides them with little incentive to oppose price controls. In the experiment, we manipulated whether consumers were personally exposed to the price cap or received factual information about its effect on quantities, as well as consumers’ agency in the decision to implement the policy. We report three main findings. First, while personal exposure to the price cap significantly reduced support for it, a sizeable fraction of consumers still endorsed the policy. Second, simply providing consumers with factual information about market outcomes was less effective than personal exposure. Third, consumers who were directly responsible for the decision to impose the price cap were more responsive to both types of information and hence less willing to implement the policy. Overall, our results suggest that endorsement of price caps may be partially resistant to experience and factual information, and that consumers’ lack of agency in policy decisions may help to explain the popularity of price controls.