This paper examines the impact of procedural justice and sanctions on police legitimacy in a middle-income context using a between-subjects vignette experiment among civilians and police officers in Honduras. The scenarios involved civilian-police interactions following a minor infraction,...

This paper examines the impact of procedural justice and sanctions on police legitimacy in a middle-income context using a between-subjects vignette experiment among civilians and police officers in Honduras. The scenarios involved civilian-police interactions following a minor infraction,...

This Human Capital Review aims to provide analytical foundations in the support of policies that improve human capital outcomes for the following four UMI countries in Central America: Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. The objective of this report is to identify the key...

The Survivor-centered Accessibility Framework Evaluation (SAFE), supported by the State and Peacebuilding Fund (SPF), comprehensively examines access barriers faced by women and girls in transit who are survivors of GBV across Central America. It focuses on the physical, social, legal, and...

After-school programs (ASP) that keep youth protected while engaging them in socio-emotional learning might address school-based violent behaviors. This paper experimentally studies the socio-emotional-learning component of an ASP targeted to teenagers in public schools in the most violent...

After-school programs (ASP) that keep youth protected while engaging them in socio-emotional learning might address school-based violent behaviors. This paper experimentally studies the socio-emotional-learning component of an ASP targeted to teenagers in public schools in the most violent...

In rural and peri‑urban areas of Central America, community water organizations (CWOs) provide water to 60 % of the population, thereby playing a pivotal role in achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals. However, the underlying environmental, climatic, and institutional factors...

The impact of violence from young gangs on the economic growth is obviously substantial, but measuring such impact to get a sense of the intensity of its effects on the economic performance is subject to a great deal of uncertainty. As such, this paper primarily attempts to close this gap by...

This paper uses the example of Central Americans from the Northern Triangle living in the United States as an illustration of the decisions of refugees to forego formal asylum in favour of irregular status. The question at the centre of this paper is: how might we understand the decisions of...

This paper explores international trade data, classified by technology-intensiveness and type of products, to identify stylized facts, strengths, and weaknesses of the trade patterns in the region of Central America and the Dominican Republic between 1975 and 2016. I focus the analysis not only...

The Washington, DC, metropolitan area, encompassing parts of DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV), receives immigrants from all over the world, especially Central America. This includes minors who face unique struggles before, during, and after their migration journeys. In this paper, we utilize...

This report aims to review Latin America and Caribbean (LC2) projects both in preparation and implementation phases to identify key entry points to address Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). This review sought to identify VAWG prevention and response actions beyond Sexual Exploitation and...

The Advisory Services and Analytics (ASA) Mitigating Gender-Based Violence Risks and Expanding the gender-based violence (GBV) portfolio in Central America carried out in FY21 aimed to develop and apply a methodology to screen World Bank (WB) projects across sectors to identify entry points for...

This note aims to close the knowledge gap about the effectiveness and capacity of labor migration sending systems in NCA countries. The report assesses whether NCA countries have the fundamental elements of an effective labor migration sending system, identifies the missing elements, and offers...

Social Protection and Labor (SPL) Systems help individuals and societies manage risk and volatility and protect them from poverty through instruments that address the challenges of resilience, equity and opportunity. SPL systems include social safety nets, social insurance, and labor market...

Purpose - In this paper, the authors suggest that Central Americans can use entrepreneurship to solve economic uncertainty in their home country and that entrepreneurship can contribute to reducing the number of undocumented migrants to the USA. Design/methodology/approach - The authors first...

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and central banks worldwide implemented a wide range of policies to support households and businesses, among them a series of measures to support the availability of credit. This paper quantitatively assesses how monetary and regulatory policy...

This paper explores the potential growth of Central America and the Dominican Republic after the 2008-2009 crisis to shed light on their 2020 pre-pandemic macroeconomic vulnerability and to ascertain that the observed path is deviating more than before from its potential. Using Hodrick-Prescott...

Very few labor-based pathways for regular migration are available for people in Northern Central America, often called the 'Northern Triangle' of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. This note briefly summarizes the state of labor-based migration channels in the region. It then argues that...

This study considers the economic impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on commercial enterprises in four Central American countries - El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. At the time of analysis, neither the pandemic nor its economic consequences had fully run their course....

Climate change adaptation has long been established as a regional and national priority in Central American countries. Korea, as a responsible middle power in global governance, should not hesitate to play a more active role in tackling their adaptation challenges. This brief summarizes a number...

In the light of a changing climate, resilient coffee varieties and adoption of improved agricultural practices are needed. Agronomic studies have promoted the first generation of Coffea arabica hybrid cultivars (F1 hybrids) as resistant to pest and diseases and able to grow under shade. Thus,...

In contrast to expectations, remittances to Central America and the Caribbean (CAC) surprised positively during 2020 and 2021. This study revisits the key macro indicators driving remittances, looks at the heterogeneous impacts of the global financial crisis (GFC) and COVID shocks, then uses...

The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has had widespread negative effects in developing countries around the world, generating an unprecedented shock. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) was a particularly affected region, recording a significant contraction in regional GDP and international...

The paper assembles and harmonizes sectoral data from several sources to study the industrial trends in six Central American economies. The industrial employment share contracted by 2.5 percentage points on average over the past two decades. This deindustrialization was not trade-driven in which...

This report explores the agrologistics challenges and opportunities faced by agri-food systems in three countries in Northern Central America (NCA), namely El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, with a specific focus on the impacts on family farming systems. As an overarching principle guiding the...

This white paper provides a high-level summary of the research. Using a mixed methods comparative case study approach, I explore the impacts of county-level sanctuary ordinances on the entrepreneurial activities of Mexican and Central American immigrants in the U.S. I find that although...

From 1995 to 2015, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Panama witnessed phenomenal shifts in labor market participation and occupational distribution of women. The occupational changes suggest that many talented women in the mid-1990s were in professions that did not conform to their comparative...

This research explores the competitive environment for urban formal sector firms competing against peer formal sector firms behaving informally in Central America. Explored is the upper bound of the formal-informal continuum in a regional economic environment of persistent and widespread...

The pandemic has urged countries around the globe to mobilize financing to support the recovery. This is even more relevant in Central America, where the policy response to cushion the pandemic’s economic and social impact has accentuated pre-existing debt vulnerabilities. This paper documents...

This paper analyzes the potential for fintech to facilitate cheaper and more efficient remittances, and to enhance financial inclusion in Central America. Digital remittances remain nascent in the region, primarily reflecting behavioral inertia, small cost advantages of digital over traditional...

Very few labor-based pathways for regular migration are available for people in Northern Central America, often called the 'Northern Triangle' of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. This note briefly summarizes the state of labor-based migration channels in the region. It then argues that...

In this article, we seek to classify the national culture of Belize through the typologies offered by Geert Hofstede (1980) and Edward T. Hall (1960). The classification allows comparative use of existing cultural data for most other nations and world regions important in navigating cultural...

This study uses changes in the Human Development Index (HDI) between 2019 and 2021 as an early (and incomplete) indicator of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the countries of Central America and the Caribbean (CAC). The HDI, which has been published annually by the United Nations...

Central America is one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to extreme climate events. The literature estimates the macroeconomic effects of climate events mainly using annual data, which might underestimate the true effects as these extreme events tend to be short-lived and generate...