I am an associate professor of economics at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas – CIDE) in Mexico City and an affiliate at Spectron Desarrollo. My research interests include labor economics, development, and social program evaluation. In particular, I have specialized in the evaluation of conditional cash transfer programs. I received a PhD in Economics at Yale in 1993 and a BA in Economics and Mathematics at Franklin and Marshall College in 1987.
Articles
Deception and Misreporting in a Social Program (with Cesar Martinelli), Journal of the European Economic Association (2009)
We investigate empirically the extent of misreporting in a poverty-alleviation program in which self-reported information,...
Do School Subsidies Promote Human Capital Accumulation among the Poor? (with Cesar Martinelli), Scandinavian Journal of Economics (2008)
We investigate the hypothesis that conditioning transfers to poor families on school attendance leads to...
Job Loss and Family Adjustments in Work and Schooling During the Mexican Peso Crisis (with Emmanuel Skoufias), Journal of Population Economics (2006)
We use individual data from a panel of families during the depth of the peso...
Schooling Inequality and Language Barriers (with Luis Rubalcava and Graciela Teruel), Economic Development and Cultural Change (2005)
This article estimates the impact of language barriers on school achievement and the potential ameliorating...
Randomization and Social Program Evaluation: The Case of Progresa (with Graciela Teruel), The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2005)
In this article, the authors analyze the development of Progresa, a Mexican antipoverty program that...
Unpublished Papers
Within-Family Program Effect Estimators: The Impact of Oportunidades on Schooling in Mexico (with Petra E. Todd and Ken Wolpin) (2006)
This paper explores the use of dynamic panel data models and sibling-based estimation procedures for...