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Papers

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Papers (selected)
  1. In-person versus remote (mHealth) delivery for a responsive parenting intervention in rural Kenya: A cluster randomized controlled trial., joint with Garcia, IL., Luoto, J, Aboud, F., Mwoma, T., Alu, E., Odhiambo., A. BMC Public Health, 24(1), 2024. 10.1186/s12889-024-19828-5.
  2. Economics and Measurement: New measures to model decision making., joint with Almas, I. and Attanasio, O. Econometrica, Volume 92, Issue 4, 2024.
  3. Early Childhood Intervention for the Poor: Long Term Outcomes., joint with Andrew, A., Attanasio, O., Augsburg, B., Cardona-Sosa, L., Day, M., Giannola, M., Grantham-McGregor, S., Meghir, C., Rubio-Codina, M. National Bureau of Economic Research, No. w32165, 2024.
  4. Mothers’ Social Networks and Socioeconomic Gradients of Isolation. Economic Development and Cultural Change., joint with Andrew, A., Attanasio, O., Augsburg, B., Behrman, J., Day, M., Meghir, C., Phimister, A. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 73(1), 2024. 10.1086/727807.  National Bureau of Economic Research No. w28049, 2020. download here
  5. Early Stimulation and Enhanced Preschool: A Randomized Trial., joint with Meghir, C., Attanasio, O., Behrman, J., Day, M., Grantham-McGregor, S., Gupta, P., Makkar, P., Pal, R., Phimister, A., Vernekar, N. Pedriatics, Volume 151, Issue Supplement 2, 2023.
  6. The Reach Up Parenting Program, Child Development, and Maternal Depression: A Meta-analysis, joint with Coore-Hall, J., Pitchik, H., Arnold, Ch., Fernald, L., Grantham-McGregor, S., Hamadani, J., Baker-Henningham, H., Rubio-Codina, M., Smith, J., Trias, J., Walker, S. Pedriatics, Volume 151, Issue Supplement 2, 2023.
  7. Improving Access and Quality in Early Childhood Development Programs: Experimental Evidence from the Gambia., joint with Carneiro, P., Blimpo, MP., Pugatch, T. Economic Development and Cultural Change, Volume 70, Issue 4, 2022.
  8. Pre-analysis plan Family and Childhood Development: Kizazi Kijacho (''The Next Generation'') - a Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial., joint with Ingvild, A., Attanasio, O., Betancourt, T., Bornstein, MH., Caeyers, B., Elisaria, E., Masanja, H., Meghir, C., Moreira, M., Prabhakar, P., Ringdal, C. ClinicalTrials, No. NCT05598970, 2022.
  9. Well-being of School Communities in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study in Chilean Low- SES Schools., joint with López, V., Ramírez, L., López-Concha, R., Ascorra, P., Alvarez, JP., Carrasco-Aguilar, C.,Squicciarini, AM., Simonsohn, A., Contreras, T., Opazo, H. accepted in Frontiers in Psychology, 2022. download here
  10. The Development of Positive Attributes of Character: On the Embodiment of Specificity, Holism, and Self-System Processes., joint with Lerner, R. M. and Bornstein, M. H. Human Development, 66:34–47, 2022. download here
  11. Does Maternal Mental Health and Maternal Stress Affect Preschoolers’ Behavioral Symptoms?., joint with Santelices, M. P., Irarrázaval, M., Brotfeld, C., Cisterna, C., Children, 8(9), 816, 2021. download here
  12. Enhancing the international study of positive youth development: Process, specificity, and the sample case of character virtues., joint with Lerner, R. M. and Bornstein, M. H. Journal of Youth Development, 16(2-3), 402-422, 2021. download here
  13. Validation of motor, cognitive, language, and socio-emotional subscales using the caregiver reported early development instruments: an application of multidimensional item factor analysis., joint with M. Waldman et. al., International Journal of Behavioral Development, 45(4), 368-377, 2021. download here
  14. Group Delivery or Home Visits of Early Childhood Stimulation: A Cluster Randomized Control Trial., joint with Attanasio, O., A. Akanksha, B.Augsburg, J.Behrman, B.Caeyers, M.Rubio-Codina, M.Day, S.Grantham-McGregor, R.Kochar, P.Makkar, C.Meghir, A.Phimister, K.Vats. Pedriatics, 146(6): 2020. download here
  15. Cluster randomized trial of the effects of timing and duration of early childhood interventions in Odisha-India: Study protocol., joint with Attanasio, O., Augsburg, B., Behrman, J., Grantham-McGregor, S., Meghir, C., Phimister, A., Rubio-Codina, M., Institute for Fiscal Studies Working Paper, WP19/06, 2019. download here
  16. Om foreldres investeringer i barns utvikling., joint with I. Almas, O. Attanasio, B. Caeyers, C. Ringdal, and V. Somville. Magma 6/2019.
  17. Measuring early childhood development at a global scale: Evidence from the Caregiver-Reported Early Development Instruments., joint with D. McCoy et. al., Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 45, 2018. download here
 
Revise and Resubmit, and Submitted
  1. Complementarities in the production of child health., joint with Abramovsky, L., Augsburg, B., Malde., B. and Phimister, A. Institute for Fiscal Studies Working Paper, WP19/15, 2019 download here. Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Human Capital.
  2. Improving Parental Investments in Children: Experimental Evidence from the Gambia., joint with Carneiro, P., Blimpo, MP., Lahire, N., Pugatch, T. Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Human Capital.
  3. Subjective Parental Beliefs. Their Measurement and Role., joint with O. Attanasio and F. Cunha. NBER Working Paper No. 26516, 2019 download here. Submitted.
  4. Incentives for public sector workers in real-world conditions: an experimental evaluation of midwives' retention incentives in Nigeria., joint with Holmlund, M., Rosa Dias, P., Vera-Hernández, M. Revise and Resubmit, Journal of the European Economic Association.
Work in Progress (selected)

 

A Dynamic Model of Early Parental Investments in Children's Human Capital - first draft 2017 - Job Market Paper - download here

Presented at: CPP Away Day, Institute of Fiscal Policies, UK, October 25, 2017, The early years: child well-being and the role of public                           policy, IDB Conference, The British Academy, UK, June 9-10, 2016 and Department of Economics, UCL, September 2016, UK

In this paper, I develop a dynamic structural model estimated with rich longitudinal data from Chile, in which I integrate a children's human capital model with multiple stages of childhood into a dynamic framework to explain parental investment decisions, modeling quality parental investment time and children's technology skill formation accounting for unobserved heterogeneity (income shocks). Parents maximise a constrained model, choosing consumption and quality time with their child and monetary investments in a sequential decision problem using a unitary model. This way, I explore potential mechanisms: First, the effect of parental preferences when they make decisions in each period of a child's life in terms of his/her developmental outcome measure as cognitive and non-cognitive skills; Second, I analyse the constraints parents face when they are taking their decisions in terms of monetary and quality time with their child; and third, the importance of addressing expectations driving investment choices. An important contribution to the literature of child development is a two-step procedure used to eliminate the presence of measurement error in the data for the inputs in the production function as well as integrating a life cycle model into the analysis and hence accounting for the endogeneity (correlation with the unobserved shocks) of investments. In the first stage, I estimate a measurement model based on a linear dynamic factor model and exploit cross-equation restrictions (covariance restrictions) proving that I can identify all of them. In the second step, I estimate together with the dynamic and stochastic structural model that incorporate parental choices based on the overall description of the mechanisms through which parental investment is modified and affects the human capital formation of their children, adding restrictions that involve weaker assumption than those derived from the literature, as well as allowing for simulations of the most effective targeting policies for Early Child Development compensating the most disadvantaged children.

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The myths behind the technology of skills in early childhood - first draft 2016 - Working Paper - download here

Presented at: EDePo Workshop, Institute of Fiscal Policies, March 2017

 

Genetics, environment and parental investment at different stages of early years of childhood affect the formation of human capital skills. Only when these channels are adequately incorporated in the study of the human capital formation will be possible to tackle early gaps in childhood and formulating efficient public policies. Despite these recent advances, there is still very little known about the return to cognitive and non-cognitive skills in developing countries. Recent studies have demonstrated how multiple factors relate in a complex way (Cuhna et. al. (2007, 2010)) through the use of technologies of skill formation. I follow the methodology proposed by Cuhna et al. (2010) to estimate a multistage technology of skill formation for capturing different development phases in the early years of a child and dealing at the same time the problem of endogeneity of inputs (correlation with the unobserved shock) and the multiplicity of inputs relative to measures. One contribution to the literature is that I include multiple parental investments not only regarding material resources (monetary investment) and quality time investment but also regarding cognitive stimulation and emotional support. This model provides two critical parameters, the self-productivity of skills (if the child learns how to count, then he can use it to learn other skills which means that skills are self-reinforcing and persist into future periods) and dynamic complementarity (synergy of investments at different t), hence, a second contribution is to analyse if complementarities change with age stages. This paper also contributes from previous research as include a rich Chilean data to apply the state-of-the-art methodology in the estimation of the production function. Exploiting the rich panel structure of the Encuesta Longitudinal de Primera Infancia (Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ELPI)) survey I find evidence about the importance of the stock of child's skills as well as early investment in childhood development. Comparing the formation of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in children dealing or not with endogeneity, there is substantial evidence of the effect of parental investment in early childhood development and support the fact that parental investment is endogenous. Based on the estimation of the same production function but for different age stages, the principal result is how parental investment foster cognitive skills between 24-47 months concerning early and older stages instead for future non-cognitive skills the parental investment have the same effect for all the age stages. There is evidence of cross-productivity for both skills which raises for older stages. Regarding the impact of separating the investment in material resources and quality time in child skills at age t the results show that material resources are essential for determining future child's cognitive skills and quality time for deciding future child's non-cognitive skills. Finally, splitting the investment in cognitive stimulation and emotional support in child skills at age t the results show that there is not much return regarding cognitive stimulation meanwhile the return of emotional support is higher on future child's non-cognitive skills.

 

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Disentangling the Determinants of Early Childhood Development in Chile, MRes Economics UCL, 2010-2011 - Working Paper - download here

Presented at: EDePo Workshop, Institute of Fiscal Policies, September 2011 and Department of Economics, Universidad de Chile, December 2011

This paper presents a theoretical framework and empirical analysis to contribute to the debate about the determinants of early childhood development in a developing country from Latin America: Chile. The Ecological Environment theoretical model for childhood was proposed to define the determinants of early childhood. This paper aims to disentangle the determinants behind early childhood development based on multiple empirical strategies through the use of the first and second wave of a recent longitudinal survey, which was designed to characterise the child development. The data contains information about demographics, family's background, cognitive, socioemotional and physical measures for mothers and children under five years old and home assessment environment. The determinants of early childhood development, particularly, cognitive and non-cognitive skills, are studied through the estimation of contemporaneous and value-added cognitive and non-cognitive production functions, as well as the use of factor analysis such as item response theory for reducing the number of inputs. Three main results arise: (1) there are significant socioeconomic gradients in all cognitive tests between poorest and richest quintiles, which lead to a liability among disadvantaged children. Once controlling by observables, the gradient starts to decrease and in some cases to lose significance; (2) there is a significant effect of mother's characteristics and family background at later stage development (above 24/30 months old) measured principally by mother's education, age and cognitive skills, if the family is a two-parent family, the presence of younger/older children as well as home environment measures by parent-child activities, learning materials, parental involvement and verbal and emotional responsibility scores. The later stage development also adds a significant effect on attending a preschool. The previous determinants drive the fall in the socioeconomic gradient in both stages; and (3) regarding the non-cognitive skills, for both waves, the results are similar, there are socioeconomic gradients that are still significant after controlling for all the variables. If the child is male, have a negative and significant effect as well if they attend to preschool. Mother's education and age have positive and significant impact meanwhile having younger children in the household have an adverse and significant effect. Having both parents have a positive impact as well as child's weight at birth and the mother's cognition level. For the first time, all the sub scales of the mother's socioemotional test are (positively) correlated with the child's socioemotional skills. The home environment continues presenting positive and significant effect on child's development.

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Who Benefits from Early Interventions? Evidence from Genetics. With O. Attanasio, G. Conti, C. Meghir and A. Okbay - work in progress 

Presented at: EDePo Research Meetings, IFS, 10 September 2015

 

This paper uses genome observational data to disentangle the heterogeneity in the impacts of an early childhood intervention as function of child and maternal genetic endowments, and how these affect human capital investments. We integrate genes into an economic model of child development to examine gene-by-environment interactions (GxE) where both G and E are randomized. We use detailed and unique data for the identification of the model from an early childhood intervention ran in Colombia, in which, home visitors paid weekly visits to randomly chosen households with the aim of promoting child cognitive and non-cognitive development and improving mother-child interactions. The intervention targeted poor households with children aged 12 to 24 months at baseline and lasted 18 months. During the second follow-up DNA was extracted from mother-children pairs which is the first and only case to date for a less developed country. We examine if the treatment effects are greater for children (and mothers) with more plastic allele, if the mechanisms driving this heterogeneity occur because the mothers with the plastic allele have greater changes in investment and if there is evidence that functionality of genotypes (in addition to frequency) differs across ethnicities. We also study, testing balancing by allele frequency, genotype frequencies, and perform Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) tests, if the characteristics of those who gave consent different from those who did not and if this differ between treatment and control groups independent of genotype but also in terms of genotype to reveal if more mothers with the sensitive genotype are the ones that give their consent.

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Intergenerational Transmission on human capital accumulation. With O. Bandeira, I. Rasul and A. Andrew - work in progress

 

We evaluate long run effects of an anti-poverty transfer programme on human capital accumulation on those who were exposed to the programme in early childhood. To do this we assessed several domains of human capital found to be particularly salient in intergenerational transmission of poverty to a planned follow-up survey of long-run impacts of an asset transfers programme implemented in Bangladesh in 2007. We focus specifically on the long-run effects of the programme on human capital accumulation among those who were age 0-5 at the time of programme implementation and are age 10-15 at the time of the planned follow-up round. In addition to assessing the impacts of the asset transfer programme, this feature allows us to (a) assess impacts of exposure to the programme at different stages of early childhood; and (b) rigorously assess impacts of a selection key environmental factors captured in the previous rounds of data on child development. This paper contributes substantively to the literature on the impact of anti-poverty programmes by examining long-run impacts on human capital accumulation.

 

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Intra-household resource allocation: Do mothers and couples have different preferences?, joint with I. Almas, O. Attanasio, and C. Ringdal - work in progress

This study analyzes, with a novel experiment, the allocation preferences within households, both in terms of allocation to spending of different goods, and allocations to different household members. Preferences are elicited using a hypothetical allocation decision: the participants allocate between six consumption categories, and to different household members within each category: the mother, the father, and a child. A total of 287 households with a child between 0 and 3 years from Northern Tanzania participated in the study. It was randomized whether the allocation decision was made by the mother alone or the couple jointly. The results show that mothers allocate more to children than couples do. This finding is driven by mothers allocating more to children’s food and clothing consumption. We also find that our elicited preferences predict actual parental practices.

Previous Research

The Inflationary Compensation and its components in Chile. Revista Economía Chilena, Vol. 10(2), August 2007 - download here

This paper studies the determinants of the components of the inflation compensation defined as the difference that exists among the nominal interest rates and index-linked. The previous thing permits to evaluate how much they impact these in the elections of briefcase of the economic agents and, therefore, in the interest rates that are observed in the market.    For this they break down the determinants, building series of time until today nonexistent. Subsequently models of behavior for the expectations of inflation they are estimate, the premium by risk inflation, risk indexing and risk liquidity, for instruments of different time limit and in two dimensions. The empirical results confirm the hypothesis presented on the importance to incorporate not only the expectations of inflation to explain the inflation compensation in the Chilean economy but also the existing risks in the market deriving finally to a relation of Fisher more extensive than their beginnings.     

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On Shore Rate in Chile. With D. Calvo and F. Alarcón. Revista Economía Chilena, Vol. 11, N2, August 2008 - download here

Parte integral del mercado de cobertura cambiaria corresponde a la tasa de interés en dólares local (on-shore) implícita en los precios forward de las operaciones de cobertura cambiaria habituales en el mercado interno y en el mercado externo. Nuestra contribución en este trabajo es analizar una serie temporal de esta tasa que ha experimentado fluctuaciones significativas que la han elevado por sobre su valor referente natural correspondiente a la libor. Asimismo, examinamos los factores que determinan la diferencia (spread) entre esta tasa y la libor. Así, entonces, en este artículo contribuimos a mejorar la comprensión del funcionamiento del mercado de cobertura cambiaria chileno. Trabajos previos han analizado y descrito el funcionamiento del mercado de cobertura chileno. En efecto, Alarcón, Selaive y Villena (2004) realizan una descripción y comparación internacional de este mercado, mientras Ahumada y Selaive (2007) estiman el grado de desarrollo del mercado de cobertura y el rol que han jugado sus fundamentos en su significativo crecimiento. Finalmente, Jadresic y Selaive (2005) analizan la e ciencia de este mercado y el rol que la actividad cambiaria podría haber tenido sobre la volatilidad del tipo de cambio contado (spot). La siguiente sección introduce la paridad cubierta de tasas. La tercera sección analiza la evolución de la tasa de interés on-shore. La última sección concluye.

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