Res authors Detail
Juan Pablo Chauvin is a Research Economist at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank. He is also an associate at the Center for International Development at Harvard University. His research focuses on the economic development cities and regions, with a focus on understanding the connections between labor markets, housing markets, and the industry composition of places. In the past, he has been a consultant with the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GiZ), the World Bank, the OECD and the private sector; advising local and national governments in South America, Asia, the MENA region and South East Europe. He has also been an instructor at the Harvard Kennedy School and at Ecuadorian Universities. He holds a PhD in Public Policy and a Master in Public Administration - International Development from Harvard, a Master in Public Policy from FLACSO - Ecuador, and B.A.s in Sociology and Economics from Universidad San Francisco de Quito.
LATEST OPINION PIECES
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Between 1991 and 2010, millions of Brazilians migrated from rural to urban areas, many of them because of the effect of increasing drought brought on by climate change. This migration has had effects not only on wages and employment, but also on the closely-related urban housing market. We decided to examine the phenomena in a […]
The post Climate Change, Migration and the Urban Housing and Labor Markets appeared first on Ideas Matter.
Researchers have documented that female leaders tend to make different policy decisions than male leaders, especially in developing countries. They have been shown, for instance, to be less prone to corruption than men and to invest more in certain public goods, like health and education. But less is known about why female leaders make different […]
The post Gender Bias and the Electoral Incentives of Female Politicians appeared first on Ideas Matter.
The place where somebody lives matters for their physical well-being. Even within the same country, residents of different cities can have on average better or worse health, partly due to policies their city governments have adopted. Consider life expectancy in Latin America. The gap between the highest and lowest life expectancies in urban areas of […]
The post What Can City Governments in Latin America Do to Improve Public Health? appeared first on Ideas Matter.
As we approach the two-years mark since the onset of COVID-19, countries around the world continue to struggle with the health and economic effects of the pandemic, many facing their third, and even their fourth wave of infections. However, within each country, not all areas have been affected with the same intensity, with some places […]
The post Why has COVID-19 Affected Some Cities More Than Others? appeared first on Ideas Matter.
The story of migration in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 20th and early 21st century is one of a mass exodus from rural areas to cities. Less than half of the population in the region lived in the cities in 1960. By 2016 that had soared above 80%. The motivations behind this mass […]
The post What Drives Rural Migration in Latin American and the Caribbean? appeared first on Ideas Matter.
The widespread inequalities of economic opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean are a major concern for policymakers throughout the region. These inequalities are, in no small part, spatial. Where you live and where you work matters—often substantially—for your opportunities in life. Research is rapidly improving our understanding of the geographic dimension of inequality, and opening doors to new policy approaches to […]
The post How Residential Segregation Fuels Inequality, and What Can Be Done about It appeared first on Ideas Matter.
The risk of dying from Covid-19 is significantly lower for young and middle-aged adults than for the elderly. The fact that Latin America’s population is younger relative to high-income regions would suggest that age-based prioritization of vaccine delivery, targeted confinement, and other policies targeting those most at risk of developing serious complications would be especially cost-effective. Put another […]
The post The Young Fare Better with Covid-19. But in Latin America the Reality Is More Nuanced appeared first on Ideas Matter.
As the first wave of COVID-19 infections advances across the globe, more data becomes available that can help us better understand where we are, how we arrived here, and what may be on the horizon. This blog post explores what widely available data can tell us about how the much-cited curve of infections has progressed […]
The post Where is Latin America and the Caribbean on the COVID-19 Curve? appeared first on Ideas Matter.
Fifteen years ago, researchers were restricted to using surveys, censuses and basic administrative data when they examined cities and local policies. But those methods have real limitations. Surveys can be prohibitively expensive. Censuses may be out of date and administrative data often fail to represent the population as a whole. Today, we live in a […]
The post Big Data: New Opportunities and Challenges for Urban Research appeared first on Ideas Matter.
When Brazil’s government decided in 1967 to create a free trade zone in Manaus, it had glittering visions of Amazonian development. Located at the meeting point of two tributaries of the Amazon river, the so-called “City of the Forest” had fallen on hard times since the end of the rubber boom nearly a century before. […]
The post Migration Can Shape Local Development Policies in Unexpected Ways appeared first on Ideas Matter.
When it comes to urban economic development, everything is a question of tradeoffs. There are, as economists like to say, “no free lunches.” Consider California. The astronomical wages paid by firms like Google, Apple and other digital firms draw thousands of people to the Silicon Valley/San Francisco area, and the high wages of the Hollywood studios […]
The post Who Benefits from Job Creation in Cities? appeared first on Ideas Matter.