Diether Beuermann

The Pedagogy of Science and Environment: Experimental Evidence from Peru

In todays knowledge-based societies, understanding basic scientific concepts and the capacity to structure and solve scientific questions is more critical than ever. Accordingly, in this article we test an innovative methodology for teaching science and environment in public primary schools where traditional (teacher-centred) teaching was replaced with student-centred activities using LEGO kits. We document positive and significant improvements of 0.18 standard deviations in standardised test scores. Such positive results are mainly concentrated within boys that were located above the median of baseline academic performance.

Do remittances help smooth consumption during health shocks?: Evidence from Jamaica

Remittances represent about 15 percent of Jamaica’s GDP; being the 16th country worldwide in terms of economic significance of remittances. Therefore, assessing to what extent and through what mechanisms remittances are useful for development is highly relevant. Accordingly, we identify whether remittances facilitate consumption smoothing during health shocks in Jamaica. In addition, we investigate whether remittances are subject to moral hazard by receivers, how the informal insurance provided by remittances interacts with formal health insurance, and whether there are differential effects by gender of the household head. Disentangling causality between remittances and household income or consumption is problematic as a result of reverse causation. Therefore, identifying whether remittances serve as a social insurance mechanism toward consumption smoothing would require the existence of an exogenous and unexpected shock suffered by nonreceivers and receivers. In this article, we exploit health shocks (accidents and illnesses) suffered by household members to identify the relevance of remittances as social insurance toward consumption smoothing. After showing that these shocks are as good as randomly assigned, we assess the relevance and significance of remittances as a social insurance mechanism in Jamaica. Our main findings show that health shocks adversely affect total household expenditures by an average of 19 percent. However, remittances totally offset these adverse effects, indicating that in light of idiosyncratic shocks, remittances serve as a social insurance mechanism that offers full protection. We also find that moral hazard concerns are low given that remittances are not used to smooth consumption of presumably undesirable goods for senders such as alcohol. Furthermore, we find that remittances are not relevant as an insurance mechanism against health shocks when private health insurance is present. By contrast, remittances constitute a powerful form of insurance in the absence of private health insurance. In terms of policymaking, our findings identify a particularly vulnerable population: persons without private health insurance who do not receive remittances. Therefore, developing mechanisms to identify this population could serve for targeting complementary safety nets towards this particularly vulnerable group.

Information and Communications Technology, Agricultural Profitability and Child Labor in Rural Peru

We estimate the impact of access to information and communication technology on agricultural profitability and child labor among isolated villages in rural Peru. We exploit the timing of an intervention that provided at least one public (satellite) payphone to 6,296 villages that did not previously have communication services. Using a village level panel, we show that profitability increased by 19.7 percent. Moreover, this income shock translated into a reduction in the likelihood of child market and agricultural work of 14 and nine percentage points respectively. Overall, the evidence suggests a dominant income effect in the utilization of child labor.

Privately Managed Public Secondary Schools and Academic Achievement in Trinidad and Tobago: Evidence from Rule-Based Student Assignments

Many nations allow private entities to manage publicly funded schools and grant them greater flexibility than traditional public schools. However, isolating the causal effect of attending these privately managed public schools relative to attending traditional public schools is difficult because students who attend privately managed schools may differ in unobservable ways from those who do not. This paper estimates the causal effect on academic outcomes in Trinidad and Tobago as a result of attending privately managed public secondary schools (assisted schools) relative to traditional public secondary schools. In Trinidad and Tobago, students are assigned to secondary schools based on an algorithm that created exogenous variation in school attendance, allowing us to remove self-selection bias. Despite large differences in teacher quality and peer quality across these school types, we find little evidence of any relative benefit in attending an assisted school between the ages of 10 and 15 in terms of dropout rates or examination performance at age 15.

Do Parents Know Best? The Short and Long-Run Effects of Attending The Schools that Parents Prefer

Recent studies document that, in many cases, the schools that parents prefer over others do not improve student test scores. This could be because (a) parents cannot discern schools causal impacts, and/or (b) parents value schools that improve outcomes not well-measured by test scores. To shed light on this, we employ administrative and survey data from Barbados. Using discrete choice models, we document that most parents have strong preferences for the same schools. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we estimate the causal impact of attending a preferred school on a broad array of outcomes. As found in other settings, more preferred schools have better peers, but do not improve short-run test scores. However, for females, these schools confer long-run benefits including reduced teen pregnancy, more educational attainment, increased employment, higher earnings, and improved health. In contrast, for males, the effects are mixed. The pattern for females is consistent with parents valuing school impacts on outcomes not well-measured by test scores, while the pattern for males is consistent with parents being unable to identify schools’ causal impacts.

Universal Public Health Insurance, Adult Status, and Labour Supply in Jamaica

This policy brief answers three main questions with respect to the no-user-fee policy adopted across public health centres in Jamaica: (i) Has the policy improved health status among working age adults? (ii) Has the policy influenced labour market dynamics? (iii) Has the policy had differential effects by age groups? Evidence suggests that the policy improved overall health status, as the likelihood of suffering illnesses associated with inability to carry out normal activities decreased by 28.6 percent. In addition, the number of days where people were unable to perform normal activities due to illnesses suffered within the previous four weeks decreased by 34 percent. Regarding labour market dynamics, no effects are found on the likelihood of being employed or contributing to the National Insurance Scheme. However, consistent with a reduced number of days lost due to illnesses, we find a positive effect of 2.15 additional weekly labour hours. Finally, we find that all of these positive effects are concentrated within adults in the 40-64 year-old age range. Overall, these effects suggest that the policy added a yearly average of US

Thinly traded securities and risk management

PPP 26.6 million worth of net real production to the Jamaican economy during the period 2008-12.

Activos con baja frecuencia de transacciones y manejo de riesgo

Thinly traded securities exist in both emerging and well developed markets. However, plausible estimations of market risk measures for portfolios with infrequently traded securities have not been explored in the literature. We propose a methodology to calculate market risk measures based on the Kalman filter which can be used on incomplete datasets. We implement our approach in a fixed-income portfolio within a thin trading environment. However, a similar approach may be also applied to other markets with thinly traded securities. Our methodology provides reliable market risk measures in portfolios with infrequent trading.

One Laptop per Child at Home: Short-Term Impacts from a Randomized Experiment in Peru

Thinly traded securities exist in both emerging and well developed markets. However, plausible estimations of market risk measures for portfolios with infrequently traded securities have not been explored in the literature. We propose a methodology to calculate market risk measures based on the Kalman filter which can be used on incomplete datasets. We implement our approach in a fixed-income portfolio within a thin trading environment. However, a similar approach may be also applied to other markets with thinly traded securities. Our methodology provides reliable market risk measures in portfolios with infrequent trading.