a portion of this study, and Tom Vogl and Lisa Vura-Weiss for excellent research assistance. We a... more a portion of this study, and Tom Vogl and Lisa Vura-Weiss for excellent research assistance. We also acknowledge the collaboration at every stage of this project with our
Este libro ofrece un profundo análisis comparado de la política educativa en Sudamérica. Con un s... more Este libro ofrece un profundo análisis comparado de la política educativa en Sudamérica. Con un soporte teórico integral y una metodología rigurosa, los autores reconstruyen diez casos de estudio a lo largo de las primeras dos décadas de este siglo a partir de las siguientes preguntas: ¿qué avances y retrocesos han registrado las políticas educativas en Sudamérica a partir del 2000? ¿Cómo comprender esta dinámica? ¿Cómo impactó el cambio de ciclo político regional de inicios de siglo sobre la educación? ¿Qué gobiernos realizaron mayores avances en términos de calidad y equidad? ¿Qué recomendaciones de política educativa se desprenden de esta investigación? Los hallazgos empíricos corroboran de forma contundente el impacto de la Política –con mayúscula– que, en determinado contexto regional, puede configurar de modo trascendental resultados de policy específicos, particularmente en el ámbito educativo, tan necesitado de avances medulares y definitivos. Se comprueba en este trabajo qu...
We estimate the impact of changes in unearned income on the height and weight of young children i... more We estimate the impact of changes in unearned income on the height and weight of young children in a developing country. As a source of income variation we use a change in the eligibility criteria for receipt of an unconditional cash transfer in Ecuador. Two years after families lost the transfer, which they had received for seven years, their young children weigh less and are shorter and more likely to be stunted than young children in families that kept the cash transfer. We find no statistically significant effect on young children's height and weight two years after gaining the cash transfer. Information on household expenditures suggests that a reduction of food expenditures by households that lost the transfer is the main mechanism behind this finding. JEL codes: C31, H51, I14
This study examines the rise and fall in income inequality in Ecuador over the past two decades. ... more This study examines the rise and fall in income inequality in Ecuador over the past two decades. Falling income equality during the 2000s partly coincides with the rise to power of a 'new leftist' government, but the trend was already set early in the decade. The recent trend is mainly associated with a recovery from the country's deep crisis of the late 1990s. The new leftist regime's social transfer policies helped reduce inequality further, but the continuation of Ecuador's primary export-based growth model and the lack of structural economic change do not augur for a more structural decline in inequality.
This paper estimates an ex-ante structural model that incorporates behavioral labor responses to ... more This paper estimates an ex-ante structural model that incorporates behavioral labor responses to analyze the distributive impacts of a long proposed reform in Ecuador: the shift from regressive consumer gas subsidies to the progressive Human Development Bonus (HDB). Even the most radical reform options may not have the expected sizeable distributive gains. This is the case even after the targeting instrument, SelBen, substantially corrects the current targeting deficiencies of the HDB. Poverty reduction is maximized (reduing poverty by about five percentage points) when the targeting instrument redirects resources to households close to the pre-reform poverty line. Most of this estimated impact accrues from direct effects with a minimal contribution from indirect effects. Labordriven indirect effects are multiple and complex, tending to cancel out one another.
Objective: To differentiate the effects of food vouchers and training in health and nutrition on ... more Objective: To differentiate the effects of food vouchers and training in health and nutrition on consumption and dietary diversity in Ecuador by using an experimental design. Design: Interventions involved enrolling three groups of approximately 200 randomly selected households per group in three provinces in Ecuador. Power estimates and sample size were computed using the Optimal Design software, with a power of 80 %, at 5 % of significance and with a minimum detectable effect of 0•25 (SD). The first group was assigned to receive a monthly food voucher of $US 40. The second group was assigned to receive the same $US 40 voucher, plus training on health and nutrition issues. The third group served as the control. Weekly household values of food consumption were converted into energy intake per person per day. A simple proxy indicator was constructed for dietary diversity, based on the Food Consumption Score. Finally, an econometric model with three specifications was used for analysing the differential effect of the interventions. Setting: Three provinces in Ecuador, two from the Sierra region (Carchi and Chimborazo) and one from the Coastal region (Santa Elena). Subjects: Members of 773 households randomly selected (n 4343). Results: No significant impact on consumption for any of the interventions was found. However, there was evidence that voucher systems had a positive impact on dietary diversity. No differentiated effects were found for the training intervention. Conclusions: The most cost-effective intervention to improve dietary diversity in Ecuador is the use of vouchers to support family choice in food options.
This paper examines the earnings premium to computer use in a developing country: Ecuador. We use... more This paper examines the earnings premium to computer use in a developing country: Ecuador. We use different approaches to examine whether the premium is causal. Controlling for an extensive set of observables, we find an earnings difference between users and non-users of around 20%. Using first differences, the premium drops and is no longer significant in a specification that includes proxies for workers' computer experience and knowledge. Estimates of the impact of the intensity of computer use are also small and in most cases insignificant. Estimates of the pencil premium are substantial in level specifications, but become insignificant in fixed effect specifications. Taken together, also in the setting of a developing country we do not find evidence in favour of the computer premium reflecting a causal impact.
To raise school participation, many programs in developing countries eliminate or reduce private ... more To raise school participation, many programs in developing countries eliminate or reduce private contributions to education. Using data from a randomized experiment in Ecuador, we ironically find that announcing a free school uniform program had a negative impact on attendance. The school uniforms were distributed in only 63% of the schools that were told that they would get them, thus this negative impact could have been generated by creating false expectations of free distribution, or also by a sunk cost effect on those who did actually receive the uniforms.
This article evaluates the impact of remittances on health outcomes in Ecuador using an instrumen... more This article evaluates the impact of remittances on health outcomes in Ecuador using an instrumental-variables approach. Although we do not find significant impacts on long-term child health variables, we find that remittances do have an impact on health expenditures, and on some preventive issues such as de-worming and vaccination. In addition, we find significant effects of remittances on medicine expenditures when illness occurs. In this regard, remittances are used for both preventive and emergency situations. Interestingly, we also find a significant and positive effect of remittances on health knowledge.
Journal of Research in International Education, 2022
This study provides an evaluation of the impact of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Progra... more This study provides an evaluation of the impact of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme introduced in 2006 to 200 public schools in Ecuador. Using a combination of different methodologies in order to have a credible identification strategy, we find that the International Baccalaureate Diploma has a positive impact on academic achievements as well as on secondary school progression.
Throughout Latin America, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs play an important role in soci... more Throughout Latin America, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs play an important role in social policy. These programs aim to influence the accumulation of human capital, as well as reduce poverty. In terms of educational outcomes, a number of impact evaluation studies have shown that such programs have led to an increase in school enrollment, ensured regular school attendance and led to a reduction in child labor. Theoretically, such cash transfer programs may also be expected to exert a positive impact on students’ test scores, but related empirical evidence is scarce. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the impact of a cash transfer program, the Bono de Desarrollo Humano of Ecuador, on students’ cognitive achievements. The paper uses a regression discontinuity strategy to identify the impact of the program on second grade cognitive achievement. Regardless of the specification and sample used, we find no impact of the program on test scores, suggesting that attempts at building human capital, as measured by cognitive achievement, require additional and alternative interventions.
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(1) 330-340, 2020
At the end of 2013 a compulsory inspection policy was introduced in Quito-Ecuador to ensure that ... more At the end of 2013 a compulsory inspection policy was introduced in Quito-Ecuador to ensure that new buildings complied with seismic resistant design requirements. This policy could affect the economic sector of construction by increasing the cost of buildings. It is in this context that this paper analyses the economic impact of the new construction policy. Given that this policy only applied to the canton of Quito and not to any other canton in Ecuador, the paper creates a synthetic control group on the basis of infrastructure and socioeconomic data of the fifteen most heavily populated cantons in the country. The results show a statistically significant and negative impact. In other words, although the new policy succeeded in improving the seismic resistant quality of buildings in the canton of Quito, at the same time it had a negative effect on the per capita gross value added of the construction sector.
Mundos Plurales - Revista Latinoamericana de Políticas y Acción Pública, 2019
Se analiza el acceso a la educación superior en el Ecuador con un enfoque de equidad donde se mue... more Se analiza el acceso a la educación superior en el Ecuador con un enfoque de equidad donde se muestra en términos descriptivos la relación con la pobreza y, aunque no se considera el tema de la calidad de la educación, todos, de los muchos estudios realizados y teorías, plantean una fuerte sinergia educación-pobreza. Es por eso el interés de este análisis a través de indicadores de cobertura de educación y niveles de consumo. El enfoque teórico de Sen es usado para analizar la desigualdad en el acceso a la educación superior como una medida relevante de inequidad.
The Institute of Social Studies is Europe's longest-established centre of higher education a... more The Institute of Social Studies is Europe's longest-established centre of higher education and research in development studies. Post-graduate teaching programmes range from six-week diploma courses to the PhD programme. Research at ISS is fundamental in the sense of ...
Purpose – This paper evaluates the argument that conditional cash transfer program recipients vot... more Purpose – This paper evaluates the argument that conditional cash transfer program recipients vote for the incumbent. We also test the hypothesis stating that ceasing to receive the benefit hinders support for the incumbent.
Design/methodology/approach – Using a regression discontinuity design, we assess the impact of the Bono de Desarrollo Humano cash transfer program on pro-incumbent voting of each of these four groups.
Findings – We did not find a significant impact of the transfer on pro-incumbent vote intention in any of the pairwise comparisons, which suggests that contextual factors determining retrospective voting may play an important role in shaping the relationship between pro-incumbent voting and social policy transfers.
a portion of this study, and Tom Vogl and Lisa Vura-Weiss for excellent research assistance. We a... more a portion of this study, and Tom Vogl and Lisa Vura-Weiss for excellent research assistance. We also acknowledge the collaboration at every stage of this project with our
Este libro ofrece un profundo análisis comparado de la política educativa en Sudamérica. Con un s... more Este libro ofrece un profundo análisis comparado de la política educativa en Sudamérica. Con un soporte teórico integral y una metodología rigurosa, los autores reconstruyen diez casos de estudio a lo largo de las primeras dos décadas de este siglo a partir de las siguientes preguntas: ¿qué avances y retrocesos han registrado las políticas educativas en Sudamérica a partir del 2000? ¿Cómo comprender esta dinámica? ¿Cómo impactó el cambio de ciclo político regional de inicios de siglo sobre la educación? ¿Qué gobiernos realizaron mayores avances en términos de calidad y equidad? ¿Qué recomendaciones de política educativa se desprenden de esta investigación? Los hallazgos empíricos corroboran de forma contundente el impacto de la Política –con mayúscula– que, en determinado contexto regional, puede configurar de modo trascendental resultados de policy específicos, particularmente en el ámbito educativo, tan necesitado de avances medulares y definitivos. Se comprueba en este trabajo qu...
We estimate the impact of changes in unearned income on the height and weight of young children i... more We estimate the impact of changes in unearned income on the height and weight of young children in a developing country. As a source of income variation we use a change in the eligibility criteria for receipt of an unconditional cash transfer in Ecuador. Two years after families lost the transfer, which they had received for seven years, their young children weigh less and are shorter and more likely to be stunted than young children in families that kept the cash transfer. We find no statistically significant effect on young children's height and weight two years after gaining the cash transfer. Information on household expenditures suggests that a reduction of food expenditures by households that lost the transfer is the main mechanism behind this finding. JEL codes: C31, H51, I14
This study examines the rise and fall in income inequality in Ecuador over the past two decades. ... more This study examines the rise and fall in income inequality in Ecuador over the past two decades. Falling income equality during the 2000s partly coincides with the rise to power of a 'new leftist' government, but the trend was already set early in the decade. The recent trend is mainly associated with a recovery from the country's deep crisis of the late 1990s. The new leftist regime's social transfer policies helped reduce inequality further, but the continuation of Ecuador's primary export-based growth model and the lack of structural economic change do not augur for a more structural decline in inequality.
This paper estimates an ex-ante structural model that incorporates behavioral labor responses to ... more This paper estimates an ex-ante structural model that incorporates behavioral labor responses to analyze the distributive impacts of a long proposed reform in Ecuador: the shift from regressive consumer gas subsidies to the progressive Human Development Bonus (HDB). Even the most radical reform options may not have the expected sizeable distributive gains. This is the case even after the targeting instrument, SelBen, substantially corrects the current targeting deficiencies of the HDB. Poverty reduction is maximized (reduing poverty by about five percentage points) when the targeting instrument redirects resources to households close to the pre-reform poverty line. Most of this estimated impact accrues from direct effects with a minimal contribution from indirect effects. Labordriven indirect effects are multiple and complex, tending to cancel out one another.
Objective: To differentiate the effects of food vouchers and training in health and nutrition on ... more Objective: To differentiate the effects of food vouchers and training in health and nutrition on consumption and dietary diversity in Ecuador by using an experimental design. Design: Interventions involved enrolling three groups of approximately 200 randomly selected households per group in three provinces in Ecuador. Power estimates and sample size were computed using the Optimal Design software, with a power of 80 %, at 5 % of significance and with a minimum detectable effect of 0•25 (SD). The first group was assigned to receive a monthly food voucher of $US 40. The second group was assigned to receive the same $US 40 voucher, plus training on health and nutrition issues. The third group served as the control. Weekly household values of food consumption were converted into energy intake per person per day. A simple proxy indicator was constructed for dietary diversity, based on the Food Consumption Score. Finally, an econometric model with three specifications was used for analysing the differential effect of the interventions. Setting: Three provinces in Ecuador, two from the Sierra region (Carchi and Chimborazo) and one from the Coastal region (Santa Elena). Subjects: Members of 773 households randomly selected (n 4343). Results: No significant impact on consumption for any of the interventions was found. However, there was evidence that voucher systems had a positive impact on dietary diversity. No differentiated effects were found for the training intervention. Conclusions: The most cost-effective intervention to improve dietary diversity in Ecuador is the use of vouchers to support family choice in food options.
This paper examines the earnings premium to computer use in a developing country: Ecuador. We use... more This paper examines the earnings premium to computer use in a developing country: Ecuador. We use different approaches to examine whether the premium is causal. Controlling for an extensive set of observables, we find an earnings difference between users and non-users of around 20%. Using first differences, the premium drops and is no longer significant in a specification that includes proxies for workers' computer experience and knowledge. Estimates of the impact of the intensity of computer use are also small and in most cases insignificant. Estimates of the pencil premium are substantial in level specifications, but become insignificant in fixed effect specifications. Taken together, also in the setting of a developing country we do not find evidence in favour of the computer premium reflecting a causal impact.
To raise school participation, many programs in developing countries eliminate or reduce private ... more To raise school participation, many programs in developing countries eliminate or reduce private contributions to education. Using data from a randomized experiment in Ecuador, we ironically find that announcing a free school uniform program had a negative impact on attendance. The school uniforms were distributed in only 63% of the schools that were told that they would get them, thus this negative impact could have been generated by creating false expectations of free distribution, or also by a sunk cost effect on those who did actually receive the uniforms.
This article evaluates the impact of remittances on health outcomes in Ecuador using an instrumen... more This article evaluates the impact of remittances on health outcomes in Ecuador using an instrumental-variables approach. Although we do not find significant impacts on long-term child health variables, we find that remittances do have an impact on health expenditures, and on some preventive issues such as de-worming and vaccination. In addition, we find significant effects of remittances on medicine expenditures when illness occurs. In this regard, remittances are used for both preventive and emergency situations. Interestingly, we also find a significant and positive effect of remittances on health knowledge.
Journal of Research in International Education, 2022
This study provides an evaluation of the impact of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Progra... more This study provides an evaluation of the impact of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme introduced in 2006 to 200 public schools in Ecuador. Using a combination of different methodologies in order to have a credible identification strategy, we find that the International Baccalaureate Diploma has a positive impact on academic achievements as well as on secondary school progression.
Throughout Latin America, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs play an important role in soci... more Throughout Latin America, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs play an important role in social policy. These programs aim to influence the accumulation of human capital, as well as reduce poverty. In terms of educational outcomes, a number of impact evaluation studies have shown that such programs have led to an increase in school enrollment, ensured regular school attendance and led to a reduction in child labor. Theoretically, such cash transfer programs may also be expected to exert a positive impact on students’ test scores, but related empirical evidence is scarce. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the impact of a cash transfer program, the Bono de Desarrollo Humano of Ecuador, on students’ cognitive achievements. The paper uses a regression discontinuity strategy to identify the impact of the program on second grade cognitive achievement. Regardless of the specification and sample used, we find no impact of the program on test scores, suggesting that attempts at building human capital, as measured by cognitive achievement, require additional and alternative interventions.
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(1) 330-340, 2020
At the end of 2013 a compulsory inspection policy was introduced in Quito-Ecuador to ensure that ... more At the end of 2013 a compulsory inspection policy was introduced in Quito-Ecuador to ensure that new buildings complied with seismic resistant design requirements. This policy could affect the economic sector of construction by increasing the cost of buildings. It is in this context that this paper analyses the economic impact of the new construction policy. Given that this policy only applied to the canton of Quito and not to any other canton in Ecuador, the paper creates a synthetic control group on the basis of infrastructure and socioeconomic data of the fifteen most heavily populated cantons in the country. The results show a statistically significant and negative impact. In other words, although the new policy succeeded in improving the seismic resistant quality of buildings in the canton of Quito, at the same time it had a negative effect on the per capita gross value added of the construction sector.
Mundos Plurales - Revista Latinoamericana de Políticas y Acción Pública, 2019
Se analiza el acceso a la educación superior en el Ecuador con un enfoque de equidad donde se mue... more Se analiza el acceso a la educación superior en el Ecuador con un enfoque de equidad donde se muestra en términos descriptivos la relación con la pobreza y, aunque no se considera el tema de la calidad de la educación, todos, de los muchos estudios realizados y teorías, plantean una fuerte sinergia educación-pobreza. Es por eso el interés de este análisis a través de indicadores de cobertura de educación y niveles de consumo. El enfoque teórico de Sen es usado para analizar la desigualdad en el acceso a la educación superior como una medida relevante de inequidad.
The Institute of Social Studies is Europe's longest-established centre of higher education a... more The Institute of Social Studies is Europe's longest-established centre of higher education and research in development studies. Post-graduate teaching programmes range from six-week diploma courses to the PhD programme. Research at ISS is fundamental in the sense of ...
Purpose – This paper evaluates the argument that conditional cash transfer program recipients vot... more Purpose – This paper evaluates the argument that conditional cash transfer program recipients vote for the incumbent. We also test the hypothesis stating that ceasing to receive the benefit hinders support for the incumbent.
Design/methodology/approach – Using a regression discontinuity design, we assess the impact of the Bono de Desarrollo Humano cash transfer program on pro-incumbent voting of each of these four groups.
Findings – We did not find a significant impact of the transfer on pro-incumbent vote intention in any of the pairwise comparisons, which suggests that contextual factors determining retrospective voting may play an important role in shaping the relationship between pro-incumbent voting and social policy transfers.
El libro realiza una revisión de las políticas educativas de los países de Sudamérica desde final... more El libro realiza una revisión de las políticas educativas de los países de Sudamérica desde finales del siglo pasado hasta la actualidad.
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Papers by Juan Ponce
Design/methodology/approach – Using a regression discontinuity design, we assess the impact of the Bono de Desarrollo Humano cash transfer program on pro-incumbent voting of each of these four groups.
Findings – We did not find a significant impact of the transfer on pro-incumbent vote intention in any of the pairwise comparisons, which suggests that contextual factors determining retrospective voting may play an important role in shaping the relationship between pro-incumbent voting and social policy transfers.
Design/methodology/approach – Using a regression discontinuity design, we assess the impact of the Bono de Desarrollo Humano cash transfer program on pro-incumbent voting of each of these four groups.
Findings – We did not find a significant impact of the transfer on pro-incumbent vote intention in any of the pairwise comparisons, which suggests that contextual factors determining retrospective voting may play an important role in shaping the relationship between pro-incumbent voting and social policy transfers.