Emmanuel Vazquez

The causal effect of an extra year of schooling on skills and knowledge in Latin America. Evidence from PISA

Abstract In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of an extra year of schooling on mathematics performance for seven Latin American countries based on PISA 2012. To that end we exploit exogenous variation in students’ birthdates around the school entry cut-off date using both sharp and fuzzy Regression Discontinuity designs. We find strong effects of an extra year of schooling in most countries, which amount to a 30% increase in PISA test scores in Brazil, 18% in Uruguay, 7% in Argentina and 6% in Costa Rica. These effects differ from the typical estimates obtained from simple regressions or multilevel models and are large enough to allow 15-year-old students to reach higher proficiency levels, suggesting significant potential gains of reducing dropout rates in the region. Finally, we stress the importance of taking into account the effects of school entry cut-off dates on PISA samples to avoid making unfair international comparisons.

Predicting school dropout with administrative data: new evidence from Guatemala and Honduras

ABSTRACT School dropout is a growing concern across Latin America because of its negative social and economic consequences. Identifying who is likely to drop out, and therefore could be targeted for interventions, is a well-studied prediction problem in countries with strong administrative data. In this paper, we use new data in Guatemala and Honduras to estimate some of the first dropout prediction models for lower-middle income countries. These models correctly identify 80% of sixth grade students who will drop out within the next year, performing better than other commonly used targeting approaches and as well as models used in the U.S.

How is the Internet Changing Labor Market Arrangements? Evidence from Telecommunications Reforms in Europe

This paper exploits variations in the timing of telecommunications reforms across Europe to analyze the relationship between the rise of alternative work arrangements and the emergence of the Internet. The paper evaluates whether sectors that are technologically more dependent on information and communications technologies experienced disproportionately larger changes in their employment outcomes after telecommunications reforms were introduced. The main results point to a disproportionate increase in total employment, part-time work, and home-based work among information and communications technologies–intensive sectors after the implementation of telecommunications reforms. The analysis does not find a link between the incidence of temporary employment, self-employment, second job holding, and telecommunications reforms. The main results are robust to several specifications.