The Internet roared to the scene in Latin America and it is transforming the way Latin Americans interact, shop, bank, and spend their time. The Internet is changing regional consumption patterns, the landscape of regional companies, and the region's economic prospects. Disruptive digital...

Trade facilitation policies intend to simplify administrative processes and accelerate the handling of shipments across borders. Recent research shows that these policies have substantial effects on trade flows. In this chapter, we discuss what the existing evidence for trade implies for the...

The Gini coefficient of labor earnings in Brazil fell by nearly a fifth between 1995 and 2012, from 0.50 to 0.41. The decline in earnings inequality was even larger by other measures, with the 90-10 percentile ratio falling by almost 40 percent. Although the conventional explanation of a falling...

Estimating the effect of inequality on crime is challenging due to reverse causality and omitted variable bias. This paper addresses these concerns by exploiting the fact that, as suggested by recent scholarly research, the legacy of slavery is largely manifested in persistent levels of economic...

This paper evaluates the effect of positive inducements on tax behavior by exploiting a natural experiment in which a municipality of Argentina randomly selected 400 individuals among more than 72,000 taxpayers who had complied with payment of their property tax. These individuals were publicly...

This study analyzes the effects of "financial stress" on the Uruguayan macroeconomy in the 1998Q3-2016Q2 period with the underlying idea that financial shocks propagate differently during "normal times" than during times of "stress." This behavior is captured in a multivariate framework through...

This paper evaluates whether fiscal and foreign exchange policy shocks can explain both credit and credit supply in Venezuela. Empirical evidence suggests that between 65 and 90 percent of credit growth is linked to the buildup of banks' deposits caused by the monetary effects of fiscal...

This paper presents evidence that female researchers have 7.1 percentage points lower probability of being accepted into the largest national research support program in Uruguay than male researchers. They also have lower research productivity than their male counterparts. Differences in...

This paper examines how financial fluctuations and macroeconomic stability interact in the case of Venezuela, acknowledging that financial conditions deteriorating the macroeconomic environment can arise with both good and bad macroeconomic performance. An empirical methodology is provided that...

This paper provides evidence of the existence and determinants of the publication productivity gender gap in Mexico at the individual level, and its consequences for the Mexican scientific system and productivity at both the individual discipline and the aggregate levels. The paper specifies and...