There is little micro-evidence on the persistence of natural disasters' welfare impacts. This paper assesses the effect of Hurricane Mitch on consumption of Nicaraguan agricultura) households. Mitch occurred in October 1998. Pre-post data is obtained from a nationally representative panel collected in 1998 and 2001. An additional survey was fielded in 1999 for households from the panel affected...

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The Inter-American Conference on Social Security (CISS) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Office in Mexico jointly organized the conference “Natural Disasters in Latin America: Welfare Impacts and Social Protection Solutions” held in Mexico City in January 2010. The main objectives of the conference were to improve the understanding of (i) how natural disasters affect...

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The Evaluation Report on Social Development Policy in Mexico was published by the National Council for Social Development Policy Evaluation (CONEVAL) in 2008. The Council is one of the constituting elements of the new institutional framework to evaluate the public sector performance, particularly social development policies that were put in place mostly during the first decade of this century....

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his paper presents estimates of the impact of programs for unemployed workers on the performance of program beneficiaries in Mexico. We emphasize the significance of applying methodologies capable of avoiding statistical bias attributable to unobserved variables when measuring the impact on earnings and allowing to us properly estimate unemployment duration and work status after exiting from...

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This research paper intends to quantifit targeting performance in terms of the efficiency of the 1 National Plan for Social Emergency Assistance (PANES) implemented in Uruguay between 2005 and 2007 and determine its impact on relevant issues such as school attendance, child labor and the labor market. For this analysis , we used 2006 and 2007 Continual Household Survey (ECH) data. Our outcomes...

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In recent years, the international community has expanded efforts in program evaluation to improve the accountability of development projects. This paper presents approaches to implementing state of the art evaluations in rural electrification projects, taking into account specific challenges that researchers face in such interventions. II suggests an approach to assess impacts before an...

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Despite recent growing demand from funders and governments, rigorous impact evaluations in Latin America and the Caribbean remain the exception rather than the rule. Many commissioned impact evaluations are methodologically weak, and thus only marginally useful in assessing the impact of social interventions. Other impact evaluations feature strong research methodologies at their conception, but...

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The book by Armendáriz and Morduch focuses on how microfinance institutions work, what has been their impact and whether they are financially sustainable. For such purpose the book can be divided—from my viewpoint—into six sections. The first describes the environment of imperfect information that surrounds credit transactions and the consequences that this entails. First the authors define in a...

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Various circumstances make difficult the rigorous study of processes, strategies and impact of V the efforts of financial inclusion and penetration, either at the academie level, in the public policy area or in companies and organizations of financial services industry. The central problem in Mexico has been the lack of a unified agreement on the definition and the low comprehension level of the...

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This article presents the Mexican experience with the introduction of basic transaction accounts. Basic accounts are relatively cheap simple banking products with restricted functionality targeted at social groups that have limited access to transaction accounts. In Mexico, basic payroll accounts and accounts for the general public were introduced. By law, these products must be offered by all...

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The results of 2000 study of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that while Argentinean students performed similar to their peers in most other Latin American countries, they lagged behind all OECD and most of other participating countries. Attention needs to be given to further master the reading, math and science skills that are needed for a knowledge economy; and...

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The book “Public Policy for an Inclusive Growth” (The book) is an opportune and fortunate document. It is opportune because it is presented at a time in which public policy topics are subject to a wide debate in Mexico, and the discussion is fed with diverse points of view, theoretical and political, from which it is the purpose to analyze, design, redesign, implement, and evaluate the government...

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Designing educational policies under limited budgets requires a thorough analysis of the impact of alternative factors on student performance. This work aims at providing an analysis of the relationship between university performance and its explanatory factors. The analysis Will focus on the Argentinean case, using the 1994 Census of Students in National Universities, which includes data on all...

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The evolution of specific welfare-related indicators for these indigenous populations during the last decade is the theme of this important book. The study declares to have four guiding questions, to wit: 1. Have income poverty rates increased or decreased among Indigenous Peoples over the past decade, and what are the main determinants of observed trends?, How does this evolution compare to...

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The purpose of this essay is to appraise alternative hypothesis about the origins of recent social revolt in Mexico. It shows that it is not clear that a severe rise in poverty preceded the origins of violent conflict but social polarisation. Therefore, government attempts to deactivate the economic factors that led to social unrest did not necessarily upgrade povertyreduction policies. The...

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Different economic studies have shown the importance of education in improving the quality of life of individuals. Thus, in the 90’s, the public education system was reformed to enhance the quality of public education in Brazil and motivate student interest. This paper participated in this discussion by suggesting an assessment of the impact that school infrastructure and family characteristics...

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It has been widely accepted that reforms on pension schemes have led to improvements in the financial viability of the systems. Nevertheless, at the same time it has been shown that fees charged by pension fund managers (PFM) are very high, implying high mark-ups for them and lower expected pensions for the participants. The presence of economies of scale has been suggested as one main reason for...

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This paper estimates social security financial incentives for early retirement using contemporary techniques developed in economics, and compares these estimates to those estimated for developed countries. I find that implicit tax on continued work increases with age and amounts to over one-third of an individual potential earnings at age sixty-five. The pension replacement rate shows the degree...

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In this issue of Well-being and Social Policy we have tried to include articles that support the debate around social insurance in health. This is an issue in which simple answers are hardly ever found, and a long term effort is required to understand the idiosyncrasy of each country and the best mix of regulation and financing options. Additionally, the studied cases point out to the need of a...

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Mexican Government’s Banks offer loan guarantees to private banks in order to spur credit directed to non-financial small and medium sized firms and this policy is examined here. Application of representative data to the comparative static analysis of the guarantee-use decision suggests that these schemes, as currently designed, are justifiable from an economic viewpoint. However, there is some...

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