Latin America and Caribbean
Overview
The MD4SG Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) group aims to develop a new topical focus on issues relevant to the region. This semester’s focus will be on addressing challenges through a social cohesion and integration lens. Major themes include: migration (especially the Venezuelan diaspora), crime (with a focus on youth crime), and education (integrating/engaging at risk youth in educational systems). We welcome members to join our upcoming bilingual (English and Spanish) meetings. Currently our capacity for new members is small due to the new nature of the group, but our goal is to grow throughout 2021, so please feel free to reach out to learn more about our schedule and how to get involved over the year!
Structure
The main forum of discussion for these topics will be bi-weekly meetings of an hour in length. Each meeting will address a different topic (the list of which can be found on the website), and we expect members of the group to prepare short presentations on relevant papers to kick-start discussions for each meeting. In addition, for select topics we will also bring guest speakers who are experts in the field to share their work with us.
Topics / Selected Papers
The following papers are examples of the types of paper we are thinking of reading together. We note that this list is not exhaustive, and we do not expect members to have read these papers prior to joining the group.
Migration
The Venezuelan Refugee Crisis
- Give Me Your Tired and Your Poor: Impact of a Large-Scale Amnesty Program for Undocumented Refugees. Dany Bahar, Ana Maria Ibanez, Sandra V. Rozo.
- Brothers or Invaders? How Crisis-Driven Migrants Shape Voting Behavior. Santa V. Rozo, Juan F. Vargas.
- Designing Information Provision Experiments. Haaland, Roth, Wohlfart.
EconCS / Optimisation Techniques for Refugee Integration
- An Adaptive Targeted Field Experiment: Job Search Assistance for Refugees in Jordan. Alex Teytelbaum, Max Kasy, Stefano Caria, Grant Gordon, Simon Quinn and Soha Shami.
- Improving refugee integration through data-driven algorithmic assignment. Kirk Bansak, Jeremy Ferwerda, Jens Hainmueller, Andrea Dillon, Dominik Hangartner, Duncan Lawrence, Jeremy Weinstein.
- Stability and Pareto Optimality in Refugee Allocation Matchings. Haris Aziz, Jiayin Chen, Serge Gaspers, Zhaohong Sun.
Migration to the USA from LAC
- Education and Ethnic Identity Formation among Children of Latin American and Caribbean Immigrants. Cynthia Feliciano.
- The Role of Diasporas in Conflict. Amanda Roth.
- Migración, inseguridad y vulnerabilidad en el corredor del Golfo de México. Córdova y Rodríguez.
Juvenile Crime
Social Reintegration
- Reducing crime and violence: Experimental evidence from cognitive behavioral therapy in Liberia. Christopher Blattman, Julian C. Jamison, Margaret Sheridan.
- Thinking, Fast and Slow? Some Field Experiments to Reduce Crime and Dropout in Chicago. Sara B. Heller, Anuj K. Shah, Jonathan Guryan, Jens Ludwig, Sendhil Mullainathan, Harold A. Pollack.
Access to Education
- TBA. Session with Alejandro Caceres Monroy, Deputy Director of Juvenile Criminal Responsibility at the Insitituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (ICBF)
Education
Policies as Tools for Societal / Socioeconomic Integration
- Education, Social Cohesion, and Economic Growth. Gradstein & Justman.
- Nonproduction Benefits of Education: Crime, Health, and Good Citizenship. Lochner.
- Social Exclusion in Education in Latin America and the Caribbean. IDB (2006).
Working Group Organizers
| Francisco Marmolejo | Career Development Fellow in Computer Science | University of Oxford |
| Michelle González Amador | PhD Fellow, School of Business and Economics | Maastricht University / United Nations University (UNU-MERIT) |
| Mariajose Silva-Vargas | PhD Fellow, School of Business and Economics | Maastricht University / United Nations University (UNU-MERIT) |
| Juan Felipe Penagos | Strategy & Business Development | Fundación Ceiba |