This work investigates the hypothesis of fiscal sustainability for 18 Latin American countries from 1991 to 2022. We applied a panel cointegration methodology to evaluate the existence of a long-term relationship between government revenue and expenditures, incorporating cross-sectional...

This paper studies the effects of aerial cable cars on mode of transport, time use, and employment in the metropolitan area of La Paz, Bolivia. Using an instrumental variables approach, we estimate local average treatment effects of cable car use for residents who use the system due to proximity...

This paper focuses on the significant growth of domestic credit once the debt is restructured, and shows that it is not correlated with the size of the haircut. Second, it performs an event study around Ecuador’s sovereign default and restructuring of 2008–2009 to study changes in domestic bank...

During 2021, most Latin American countries successfully deployed vaccines and their labor markets began to recover from the COVID-19 slump. Using two waves of the 2021 HFPS, we investigate the connection between immunization and employment recovery. We first show the highly uneven social impact...

Hundreds of millions of children are losing learning opportunities, resulting in potentially large losses in their lifetime education, health, income, and productivity. Losses in long-term earnings from preprimary program closures due to COVID-19 can be unprecedented. Acute effects are plausible...

We use skills surveys from 53 countries to estimate jobs’ amenability to working from home (WFH). Our measure combines data on self-reported jobs’ characteristics and home internet access into a standardized measure. We find that jobs’ amenability to WFH increases with economic...

Bogota is unique in recording and reporting the socioeconomic status of COVID-19 patients. As others in Latin America and Asia, the city imposed a blanket lockdown before contagion picked up in early 2020 and kept it in place for six months. We document that, during that period, being...

This study examines the impact on human mobility of social distancing policies implemented in 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries in March 2020. We use cell phone data and variation across countries regarding the adoption of these policies and their timing to estimate effects on the...

Using survey data, I simulate the counterfactual impact of the Chilean policies during the pandemic on household consumption. I find that aggregate consumption would have fallen by 16.7 percent in the absence of public transfers and a quarantine flexibilization policy. Consumption would still...

We simulate the short- and long-term distributional consequences of COVID-19 in the four largest Latin American economies: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. We show that the short-term impact on income inequality and poverty can be very significant, but that additional spending on social...