Although much progress has been made in understanding the importance of institutional failure in explaining creditors` unwillingness to finance firms and individuals, the pertinent empirical literature still has an important shortcoming: it does not separate out the effects of legal protection,...

This paper analyzes political economy determinants of exchange rate policy in Brazil over the past thirty years. Two complementary methodologies are used. The first consists of investigating the exchange rate policy historical context over this period. Thus, part of the paper is dedicated to an...

This paper looks into the political economy forces that helped shape exchange rate policy in Colombia since the early 1960s. As witnessed by the remarkable longevity of the managed crawl, Colombian exchange rate policies since 1967 did not take the form of major regime changes. Policy shifts...

The literature on the end of remarkable inflationary processes (Bresciani-Turroni, 1937; Sargent, 1986) calls our attention to one of the favorable aspects of hyperinflations: the fact that high inflation destroys old debts. Because of the central role fiscal deficits play in chronic inflation, the...

The review of Peruvian exchange rate policies during the last fifty years prompts several questions. First, why did the government choose some exchange rate regimes over others? Second, why did governments target certain exchange rate levels? Third, why, in certain episodes, did governments...

Exchange rates have been central to the course of economic development in Latin America for decades. From the heyday of import substitution in the 1960s to the rapid expansion of foreign debt in the 1970s, from the debt crisis and its troubled aftermath in the 1980s to the rekindling of growth...

This paper explores the impact of political economy factors on exchange rate policy in Latin America. It studies the determinants of the choice of exchange rate regime in Latin America, placing special emphasis on political, institutional and interest group explanations. The presumption is that...

Can the relatively slow growth of the formal sector in Mexico during the 1990s be attributed to a rigid labor market and to low turnover rates? Is the increasing share of workers in the informal sector and of self-employed workers evidence of market segmentation, and hence a source of inequality...

This study has two central objectives. We first describe in detail the structure and behavior of Brazilian families during their life cycle. [1] Secondly, we investigate the main socioeconomic determining factors of alterations in families structure and behavior over the past few decades. We...