1. Enrique Alasino, María José Ramírez, Mauricio Romero, Norbert Schady, David Uribe. "Learning losses during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Mexico". Economic of Education Review Volume 98, February 2024,
Abstract:
This paper presents evidence of large learning losses and partial recovery in Guanajuato, Mexico, during and after the school closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning losses were estimated using administrative data from enrollment records and by comparing the results of a census-based standardized test administered to approximately 20,000 5th and 6th graders in: (a) March 2020 (a few weeks before school closed); (b) November 2021 (2 months after schools reopened); and (c) June of 2023 (21 months after schools re-opened and over three years after the pandemic started). On average, students performed 0.2 to 0.3 standard deviations lower in Spanish and math after schools reopened, equivalent to 0.66 to 0.87 years of schooling in Spanish and 0.87 to 1.05 years of schooling in math. By June of 2023, students were able to make up for 60% of the learning loss that built up during school closures but still scored 0.08–0.11 standard deviations below their pre-pandemic levels (equivalent to 0.23–0.36 years of schooling).
2. José Ramón Enríquez, Horacio Larreguy, John Marshall, and Alberto Simpser. “Mass Political Information on Social Media: Facebook Ads, Electorate Saturation, and Electoral Accountability in Mexico”. Journal of the European Economic Association. 13 February, 2024.
Abstact:
Social media’s capacity to quickly and inexpensively reach large audiences almost simultaneously has the potential to promote electoral accountability. Beyond increasing direct exposure to information, high saturation campaigns—which target substantial fractions of an electorate—may induce or amplify information diffusion, persuasion, or coordination between voters. Randomizing saturation across municipalities, we evaluate the electoral impact of non-partisan Facebook ads informing millions of Mexican citizens of municipal expenditure irregularities in 2018. The vote shares of incumbent parties that engaged in zero/negligible irregularities increased by 6–7 percentage points in directly-targeted electoral precincts. This direct effect, but also the indirect effect in untargeted precincts within treated municipalities, were significantly greater where ads targeted 80%—rather than 20%—of the municipal electorate. The amplifying effects of high saturation campaigns are driven by citizens within more socially-connected municipalities, rather than responses by politicians or media outlets. These findings demonstrate how mass media can ignite social interactions to promote political accountability.
3. Andrei Gomberg, Romans Pancs, Tridib Sharma. "Padding and Pruning: Gerrymandering Under Turnout Heterogeneity",accepted at Social Choice and Welfare.
Abstract:
Padding is the practice of adding nonvoters (e.g., noncitizens or disenfranchised prisoners) to an electoral district in order to ensure that the district meets the size quota prescribed by the one man, one vote doctrine without affecting the voting outcome in the district. We show how padding (and its mirror image, pruning) can lead to arbitrarily large deviations from the social optimum in the composition of elected legislatures. We solve the partisan districter's optimal padding problem.
4. Mauricio Romero, Juan Bedoya, Monica Yanez-Pagans, Marcela Silveyra, Rafael de Hoyos. " The effect of school grants on test scores: experimental evidence from Mexico". Economica,Volume 91, Issue363, July 2024 Pages 980-995.
Abstract:
We use a randomized experiment (across 200 public primary schools in Puebla, Mexico) to study the impact of providing schools with cash grants on student test scores. Treated schools received on average ∼16 USD per student each year for two years, an increase of ∼20% in public spending per child, after teacher salaries. Overall, the grants had no impact on student test scores. Lack of a treatment effect does not seem to be driven by poor implementation or a substitution away from other inputs (e.g. household expenditure).
5. Abhijeet Singh, Mauricio Romero and Karthik Muralidharan, " COVID-19 L earning loss and recovery. Panel data evidence from India." The Journal of Human Resources. Vol. 59, Issue 3, 1 May 2024.
Abstract:
We use a panel survey of ~ 19,000 primary-school-aged children in rural Tamil Nadu to study ‘learning loss’ after COVID-19-induced school closures, and the pace of recovery after schools reopened. Students tested in December 2021 (18 months after school closures) displayed learning deficits of ~0.73σ in math and 0.34σ in language compared to identically-aged students in the same villages in 2019. Two-thirds of this deficit was made up within 6 months after schools reopened. Further, while learning loss was regressive, recovery was progressive. A government-run after-school remediation program contributed ~24% of the cohort-level recovery, likely aiding the progressive recovery.
6. Horacio Larreguy and Shelley Liu. “When does education increase political participation? Evidence from Senegal”. Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 2024 , pp. 354 – 371.
7. Anastasia Kozyreva, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, Stefan M. Herzog, Ullrich K. H. Ecker, Stephan Lewandowsky, Ralph Hertwig, Ayesha Ali, Joe Bak-Coleman, Sarit Barzilai, Melisa Basol, Adam J. Berinsky, Cornelia Betsch, John Cook, Lisa K. Fazio, Michael Geers, Andrew M. Guess, Haifeng Huang, Horacio Larreguy, Rakoen Maertens, Folco Panizza, Gordon Pennycook, David G. Rand, Steve Rathje, Jason Reifler, Philipp Schmid, Mark Smith, Briony Swire-Thompson, Paula Szewach, Sander van der Linden & Sam Wineburg. "Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation" Nature Human Behaviour 8, pages 1044-1052, (2024).
8. Romans Pancs and Tridib Sharma. "One Man, One Vote". accepted at the American Economis Journal: Microeconomics. Fothcoming.
9. Karthik Muralidharan, Mauricio Romero and Kaspar Wüthrich, "Factorial designs, model selection, and (incorrect) inference in randomized experiments", Forthcoming at The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2023.
10. Raul Prelleso,José María Da Rocha, María L.D. Palomares,U. Rashid Sumaila and Sebastian Villasante. "Building climate resilience, social sustainability and equity in global fisheries." Nature portfolio Journal. Forthcoming.
11. Romans Pancs. " A Vaccine Auction", Review of Economic Design, Forthcoming.
12. Paola Manzini, Marco Mariotti and Levent Ülkü, “A model of approval with an application to list design”,Journal of Economic Theory, Volume 217, April 2024.
13. Karthik Muralidharan, Mauricio Romero, Kaspar Wüthrich, “Factorial Designs, Model Selection, and (Incorrect) Inference in Randomized Experiments”, The Reveiw of Economics and Statics. Forthcoming.
14. Emilio Gutiérrez, Adrían Rubli, “LGBT+ persons and homophobia prevalence across job sectors: Survey evidence from Mexico”, Labour Economics, Volume 87, April 2024.
15. Sandra Aguilar-Gómez, Emilio Gutiérrez, David Heres, David Jaume and Martin Tobal, “Thermal stress and financial distress: Extreme temperatures and firms’ loan defaults in Mexico", Journal of Development Economics, Volume 168, May 2024.
16. Antonio Aguierre & Ignacio Lobato, "Evidence of non-fundamentalness in OECD capital stocks", Empirical Economics, Forthcoming (2024).
17. Alexander Elbittar, Andrei Gomberg and Dario Trujano Ochoa, "Citizen Candidates in the Lab: Rules, Costs, and Positions", Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Forthcoming.
18. Mai Hassan, Horacio Larreguy and Stuart Russell. “Who Gets Hired? Political Patronage and Bureaucratic Favoritism”. American Political Science Review , Volume 118 Issue 4, pages 1913 - 1930 November 2024.