Urban peripheries in many developing countries lack basic local public goods like
street pavement, water, sewerage and electricity. We design an experiment of street
pavement provision in a Mexican urban area and estimate impacts on a set of indicators
obtained from a household survey. Our ndings show that houses in streets that were
paved increased substantially in value, by 15% according to professional appraisals,
and by 24% according to homeowners. Households living in streets that were paved
obtained more credit, had higher per capita expenditures, increased motor vehicle
ownership and were more likely to have made home improvements.

I attempt to explain why compensating differentials for job disamenities are difficult to
observe. I focus on the match between workers’ preferences for routine jobs and the
variability in tasks associated with the job. Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal
Study, I find that mismatched workers report lower job satisfaction and earn lower
wages. Both male and female workers in routinized jobs earn, on average, 12% less than
their counterparts in non-routinized jobs. Once preferences and mismatch are accounted
for, this difference decreases to 8% for men and 5% for women. Accounting for
mismatch is important when analyzing compensating differentials.