Take-up of voluntary financial education
programs is typically extremely low. This paper reports on
randomized experiments around a large financial literacy
course offered... Show More +
in Mexico City to understand the reasons for
low take-up, and to measure the impact of financial
education. It documents that the general public displays
little interest in such courses and that participation is
low even among individuals who express interest in financial
education. The paper experimentally investigates barriers to
take-up, and finds no impact of relaxing reputational or
logistical constraints and no evidence that time
inconsistency is the reason for limited participation. Even
relatively sizeable monetary incentives get less than 40
percent of interested individuals invited to training to
attend. Using a randomized encouragement design, the authors
measure the impact of the course on financial knowledge and
behavior. Attending training results in a 9 percentage point
increase in financial knowledge and a 9 percentage point
increase in saving outcomes, but no impact on borrowing
behavior. Administrative data indicate that the savings
impact is relatively short-lived. The results suggest people
are making optimal choices not to attend financial education
courses, and point to the limits of using general purpose
courses to improve financial behavior for the general population. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS6439
Date: May 1, 2013
Author:
Bruhn, Miriam ;
Lara Ibarra, Gabriel ;
McKenzie, David
This paper examines the effects of
climate change on poverty through the relationship between
indicators of climate change (temperature and rainfall
change) and municipal... Show More +
level gross domestic product, and
subsequently between gross domestic product and poverty. The
evidence suggests that climate change could have a negative
impact on poverty by 2030. The paper proposes a two-stage
least squares regression where it first regresses
temperature and rainfall (along with geographic controls and
state and year fixed effects) on municipal gross domestic
product per capita for 2000 and 2005 The resulting gross
domestic product per capita is used in a second equation to
estimate municipal poverty on the same years. The authors
then incorporate projections of temperature and rainfall
changes by 2030 into the estimated climate-gross domestic
product coefficients to assess the effects of climate change
in economic activity and how this in turn will influence
poverty. At the same time, they account for the potential
adaptive capacity of municipalities through higher
population densities and economic growth. Both would reduce
poverty by 31.72 percentage points between 2005 and 2030
with changing climate. However, poverty could have been
reduced up to 34.15 percentage points over the same period
had there been no climate change. This suggests that climate
change slows down the pace of poverty reduction. An
alternative reading is that poverty is expected to increase
from 15.25 percent (without climate change) to 17.68 percent
(with climate change) by 2030. Given the existing population
projections for 2030, this represents 2,902,868 people
remaining in poverty as a result of climate change. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS6461
Date: May 1, 2013
Author:
Villarroel, Marcelo Olivera ;
de la Fuente, Alejandro
A climate change vulnerability index in
agriculture is presented at the municipal level in Mexico.
Because the index is built with a multidimensional approach
to vulnerability... Show More +
(exposure, sensitivity and adaptive
capacity), it represents a tool for policy makers, academics
and government alike to inform decisions about climate
change resilience and regional variations within the
country. The index entails baseline (2005) and prediction
(2045) levels based on historic climate data and
future-climate modeling. The results of the analysis suggest
a wide variation in municipal vulnerability across the
country at baseline and prediction points. The vulnerability
index shows that highly vulnerable municipalities
demonstrate higher climate extremes, which increases
uncertainty for harvest periods, and for agricultural yields
and outputs. The index shows at baseline that coastal areas
host some of the most vulnerable municipalities to climate
change in Mexico. However, it also shows that the Northwest
and Central regions will likely experience the largest
shifts in vulnerability between 2005 and 2045. Finally,
vulnerability is found to vary according to specific
variables: municipalities with higher vulnerability have
more adverse socio-demographic conditions. With the vast
municipal data available in Mexico, further sub-index
estimations can lead to answers for specific policy and
research questions. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS6417
Date: April 1, 2013
Author:
Borja-Vega, Christian ;
de la Fuente, Alejandro
Most migration surveys do not ask about
the legal status of migrants due to concerns about the
sensitivity of this question. List randomization is a
technique that has... Show More +
been used in a number of other social
science applications to elicit sensitive information. This
paper trials this technique by adding it to surveys
conducted in Ethiopia, Mexico, Morocco, and the Philippines.
It shows how, in principal, this can be used both to give an
estimate of the overall rate of illegal migration in the
population being surveyed, as well as to determine illegal
migration rates for subgroups such as more or less educated
households. The results suggest that there is some useful
information in this method: higher rates of illegal
migration in countries where illegal migration is thought to
be more prevalent and households who say they have a migrant
are more likely to report having an illegal migrant.
Nevertheless, some of the other findings also suggest some
possible inconsistencies or noise in the conclusions
obtained using this method. The authors suggest directions
for future attempts to implement this approach in migration surveys. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS6426
Date: April 1, 2013
Author:
McKenzie, David ;
Siegel, Melissa
This paper proposes a methodology to
evaluate social projects from the perspective of
children's opportunities on the basis of the effects of
these projects on the distribution... Show More +
of outcomes. The
evaluation is conditioned on characteristics for which
individuals are not responsible; in this case, parental
education level and indigenous background. The methodology
is applied to evaluate the effects on children's health
opportunities of Mexico's Oportunidades program, one of
the largest conditional cash transfer programs for poor
households in the world. The evidence from this program
shows that gains in health opportunities for children from
indigenous backgrounds are substantial and are situated in
crucial parts of the distribution, whereas gains for
children from nonindigenous backgrounds are more limited. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS6345
Date: January 1, 2013
Author:
Van de gaer, Dirk ;
Vandenbossche, Joost ;
Figueroa, Jose Luis
Recent research shows that employment in
Mexico's offshoring maquiladora industries is twice as
volatile as employment in their U.S. industry counterparts.
The analyses... Show More +
in this paper use data from Mexico's
social security records and U.S. customs between the first
quarter of 2007 and the last quarter of 2009 to identify
four channels through which economic shocks emanating from
the United States were amplified when transmitted into
Mexico's offshoring labor market of Northern Mexico.
First, employment and imports within industries are
complements, which is consistent with imports being used as
inputs for the assembly of exportable goods within
industries. That is, when imports fell during the crisis,
employment in Mexico was reduced rather than protected by
the fall of imports. Second, contrary to other studies,
employment is more responsive than wages to trade shocks.
Third, fluctuations in Mexico-U.S. trade were associated
with changes in the composition of employment, with the
skill level of workers rising during downturns and falling
during upswings. This implies that the correlation between
average wages and trade shocks is partly driven by
labor-force compositional effects, which may obscure
individual-worker wage flexibility. Fourth, trade shocks
affecting related industries (industries linked by
employment flows affect employment at least as much as
own-industry trade shocks, thus amplifying employment
volatility through the propagation of shocks across
industries within Northern Mexico. Furthermore, the data
suggest that the observed fluctuations in U.S.-Mexico trade
at the onset of the Great Recession in the U.S. were not
associated with pre-existing employment trends in Northern Mexico. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS6268
Date: November 1, 2012
Author:
Robertson, Raymond ;
Lederman, Daniel ;
Kaplan, David S.
This paper examines the processes used
in the United States and Mexico to assess the economic costs
and benefits of environmental improvement, the kinds of
information... Show More +
obtained from these procedures, and the
additional knowledge that is needed about both elements to
improve understanding of the problems and prospects of
advancing a green growth agenda. Because environmental and
other development needs are large and resources are limited,
it is important to choose the best projects, those with the
highest returns on both public investments and private
resources harnessed by regulation. The United States is
well-established as a world leader in the use of
quantitative methods to evaluate options for environmental
regulation and policy. Mexico represents a case where a
developing country has made clear advances in reforming its
economy and in introducing transparency in its regulatory
processes for environmental and other policy areas. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS6242
Date: October 1, 2012
Author:
Velez-Lopez. Daniel ;
Morgenstern, Richard ;
Harrington, Winston
Between 2000 and 2010, the Gini
coefficient declined in 13 of 17 Latin American countries.
The decline was statistically significant and robust to
changes in the time... Show More +
interval, inequality measures, and data
sources. In-depth country studies for Argentina, Brazil,
and Mexico suggest two main phenomena underlie this trend: a
fall in the premium to skilled labor and more progressive
government transfers. The fall in the premium to skills
resulted from a combination of supply, demand, and
institutional factors. Their relative importance depends on
the country. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS6248
Date: October 1, 2012
Author:
Lustig, Nora ;
Lopez-Calva, Luis F. ;
Ortiz-Juarez, Eduardo
Bancassurance is the process of using a
bank's customer relationships to sell life and non-life
insurance products. In some developed countries it has had a
dramatic... Show More +
impact on developing sales volumes, attaining
market shares in excess of 50 percent in life and more than
10 percent in non-life. By contrast, in other developed
countries it has had much lower impact. Its strategic
benefits to developing countries are wide ranging. This
paper discusses the potential of Bancassurance to contribute
to the growth and the stability that both life and non-life
insurance products can bring to developing countries. The
details of how some approaches work better than others, and
how regulation and consumer protection issues can impact
such development, are reviewed here, together with a
discussion of regulatory policy issues and recommendations
for best practice. The paper provides a detailed study of
the operation of Bancassurance in a major developed market
(France). This is contrasted with a further study in a
developing market (Mexico). A short summary draws together
the key implications for developing countries. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS6196
Date: September 1, 2012
Author:
Gonulal, Serap O. ;
Lester, Rodney ;
Goulder, Nick
