Public works programs (PWPs) are among the most used social protection instruments in low- and middle-income countries. While their impacts on poverty, food security and labor outcomes have been increasingly examined, there is a notable lack of systematic theoretical and empirical research focusing on their effects on climate resilience. To fill this gap, we began by developing a conceptual framework that links the different components of PWPs—wages, infrastructure, and skills development—to household capacity to cope with, and adapt to, weather shocks. After that, we used this framework to guide the review of empirical evidence on the multiple short- and long-term effects of PWPs on resilience to weather shocks, such as flood, drought, and cyclones. Overall, our review suggests that, through the wage component, PWPs can be effective in enhancing resilience, especially by increasing savings and investments in productive assets. However, these benefits usually only materialize in regular, long-term programs. The infrastructure component can be crucial in supporting households’ long-term capacity to adapt to shocks, especially given the recent focus on climate-smart infrastructures. Moreover, the positive effect of infrastructure may not be limited to the direct program beneficiaries but extend to the whole community in which PWPs are implemented. However, it is necessary to highlight that most of the evidence focuses on only a few programs and countries and relies on non-optimal—often cross-sectional—data. In particular, the empirical literature investigating the impacts of the infrastructure component of PWPs on both beneficiaries and other community members, especially that carried out through experimental and quasi-experimental methods, is scarce. Another critical research gap concerns the role of on-the-job training and its capacity to strengthen resilience in combination with the infrastructure/service component. Therefore, more research is needed in these directions. Only with adequate information on the overall impacts on different members of the society, and on the channels through which these effects materialize, can policymakers take decisions about when to implement PWPs, and how to design them.

We study the impact of improved rail access on entrepreneurship rates in England and Wales. We use data from the Census spanning 2001, 2011, and 2021 to analyse self-employment rates in granular geographic areas of around 200 residents. Specifically, we study how they respond to changes in the distance to the nearest train station occurring due to 56 new station openings. We find that all else equal, moving 1 km further away from a station reduces self-employment rates by 0.12 percentage points, with the effect dissipating beyond 7 km. Secondary results suggest that access to rail makes it easier to become self-employed while not making it more attractive compared to employment. Our findings suggest that rail infrastructure improvements can support local entrepreneurship and economic activity, contributing to regional development and reducing economic inequality.

Coastal development has advantages, such as job creation, and drawbacks, such as the loss of environmental amenities, for both residents and nonresidents. Local governments may prioritize their constituents’ interests, resulting in suboptimal coastal development. We investigate how political alignment among neighboring mayors facilitates intergovernmental cooperation in the development of coastal areas. We leverage causal effects by applying a close-elections Regression Discontinuity Design to the universe of buildings in Spain. Municipalities with party-aligned mayors develop 46% less land than politically isolated ones, and politically homogeneous coastal areas develop less than fragmented ones. The effect is more salient for land closest to shore or previously occupied by forests, in municipalities with a large share of protected land, and for relevant environmental markers, such as air and bathing water pollution. These results underscore the importance of cooperative political endeavors in managing development spillovers, with environmental considerations assuming a central role.

Most empirical studies indicate that becoming a mother is an augmenting factor for the perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV). Using rich population-wide hospital records data from Sweden, we conduct a stacked DiD analysis comparing the paths of women two years before and after the birth of their first child with same-age women who are several quarters older when giving birth to their first child and find that, in contrast to the consensus view, violence sharply decreases with pregnancy and motherhood. This decline has both a short-term and longer-term component, with the temporary decline in IPV covering most of the pregnancy until the child is 6 months old, mimicking a temporary decrease in hospital visits for alcohol abuse by the children’s fathers. The more persistent decline is driven by women who leave the relationship after the birth of the child. Our evidence is not supportive of alternative mechanisms including suspicious hospitalizations, an overall reduction in hospital visits or selection in seeking medical care, mothers’ added value as the main nurturer, or mothers’ drop in relative earnings within the household. Our findings suggest the need to push for public health awareness campaigns underscoring the risk of victimization associated with substance abuse and to also provide women with more support to identify and leave a violent relationship.

To what extent does the incumbent party’s identity shape public policies? We investigate this question by examining national and regional policies in Spain. First, we analyze the evolution of voter preferences and the platforms of the two mainstream parties (PSOE and PP) and of the newer challenger parties that emerged post-financial crisis (Ciudadanos, Podemos, and Vox). We focus on three key national-level issue dimensions: Economic, Social, and Centralization. As expected, the right-wing PP adopts a more conservative stance on all dimensions compared to the left-wing PSOE. However, the policy gap between these two parties remains relatively stable until the mid-2000s, with party platforms tracking the evolution of citizen preferences. After this period, platforms start to diverge, especially in the case of new parties, which display radical stances on these dimensions. We also provide descriptive evidence suggesting that these platform differences have translated into enacted policies. Second, to offer causal evidence on the effect of party identity on policy decisions, we examine partisan disparities in regional fiscal policies. Our findings reveal significant differences in tax policy following the granting of tax autonomy to the regions, somewhat moderated by tax competition and fiscal limits.

This paper studies the mortality effect of delaying retirement by investigating the impacts of the 1967 Spanish pension reform, which affected the general population and exogenously changed the early retirement age, depending on the date individuals started contributing to the pension system. Using the Spanish administrative data, we find that delaying retirement by one year increases the hazard of dying between the ages of 60 and 69 by 38 percent. We show that the reform leads to higher mortality in all subgroups, and the effects are statistically stronger for those employed in sectors with the highest workplace accidents and for those with low selfvalue jobs. Moreover, we show that allowing flexible retirement mitigates the adverse effects of delaying retirement.