Professor Orazio Attanasio

The relationship between early adversity and numerous negative outcomes across the lifespan is evident in a wide range of societies and cultures (e.g., Pakulak, Stevens, & Neville, 2018). Among the most affected neural systems are those supporting attention, self-regulation, and stress regulation.

In this paper we analyze the role of expected labor and marriage market returns as determinants of the college enrollment decisions of Mexican high school graduates. Moreover, we investigate whether the (relative) weights of these factors differ by gender. We use data on individuals’ expectations regarding future labor market outcomes which we directly elicited from the youths, and two different measures of marriage market returns. First, marriage market returns are proxied by the (net-)supply of potential partners in the youths’ local marriage markets. Second, we use data which elicits youths’ beliefs about their future spouse's earnings conditional on their own education level. We find that labor market as well as marriage market returns are important determinants of the college enrollment decision. However, boys’ and girls’ preferences differ in terms of the relative role of the two determinants, in that the relative weight of labor market versus marriage market returns is larger for boys than for girls.

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to signicant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disadvantaged children aged 12 to 24 months at baseline. We estimate the determinants of material and time investments in these children and evaluate the im- pact of the treatment on such investments. We then estimate the production functions for cognitive and socio-emotional skills. The eects of the program can be explained by increases in parental investments, which have strong eects on outcomes and are complementary to both maternal skills and child's baseline skills.

In this paper we use high quality data from two developing countries, Ethiopia and Peru, to estimate the production functions of human capital from age 1 to age 15.

We evaluate the long-term impacts of a randomized Colombian training and job placement program.

Holy cows or cash cows? The economic return to livestock in rural India

Why is multiple micronutrient powder ineffective at reducing anaemia among 12–24 month olds in Colombia? Evidence from a randomised controlled trial

In low- and middle-income countries (LIMCs), measuring early childhood development (ECD) with standard tests in large scale surveys and evaluations of interventions is difficult and expensive. Multi-dimensional screeners and single-domain tests (‘short tests’) are frequently used as alternatives. However, their validity in these circumstances is unknown. We examined the feasibility, reliability, and concurrent validity of three multi-dimensional screeners (Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ-3), Denver Developmental Screening Test (Denver-II), Battelle Developmental Inventory screener (BDI-2)) and two single-domain tests (MacArthur-Bates Short-Forms (SFI and SFII), WHO Motor Milestones (WHO-Motor)) in 1,311 children 6–42 months in Bogota, Colombia.

This paper studies the differential effect of targeting cash transfers to men or women on the structure of household expenditures on non-durables.

Mediating pathways in the socio-economic gradient of child development: Evidence from children 6–42 months in Bogota

This paper uses unique primary data on directly elicited individual subjective expectations to analyse and characterize the process that generates the income of poor, rural Indian households.

We evaluate the large-scale pilot program of an innovative and major welfare inter- vention in Colombia, which combines home visits by trained social workers to households in extreme poverty with preferential access to social programs.

This paper studies how targeted cash transfers to women affect their empowerment. We use a novel identification strategy to measure women's willingness to pay to receive cash transfers instead of their partner receiving it. We apply this among women living in poor households in urban Macedonia.

In this essay, we discuss the importance of consumption inequality in the debate concerning the measurement of disparities in economic well-being.

The determinants of human capital formation during the early years of life: theory, measurement and policies.

This article measures the positive effect of a social intervention on individual willingness to cooperate and relates cooperation with traditional measures of social capital.