This issue of IDEA explores the workings of democratic institutions in Latin America and how they shape economic and other policies. It analyzes the roles, incentives, capabilities and interaction of key political players: the legislature, business, organized labor and the media. Based on a...

The major objective of this paper is to investigate institutional arrangements as a determinant of loan repayment in the Chilean financial market. A second aim is to analyze the effects of these arrangements on borrowers' behavior. Although La Porta et al. (1997, 1998) classify Chile as a French...

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a simple analytical framework that can guide the development of indicators of fiscal policy sustainability in economies which operate in a highly volatile macroeconomic environment

Theory predicts that information sharing among lenders attenuates adverse selection and moral hazard, and can therefore increase lending and reduce default rates. We construct a new international data set on credit bureaus and public credit registers. The theoretical predictions are broadly...

The paper examines the consequences of the deficiencies in the legal protection of creditors` rights and the low efficiency of judicial enforcement on the functioning of credit markets in Paraguay, as well as the solutions developed to compensate for the informality and enforcement flaws of...

Financial frictions are a central element of most of the models that the literature on emerging markets crises has proposed for explaining the Sudden Stop phenomenon. To date, few studies have aimed to examine the quantitative implications of these models and to integrate them with an...

This paper summarizes and discusses new evidence on the nature, extent, evolution and consequences of financing constraints in Latin America; this evidence is drawn from a recent series of papers. The countries covered are Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Uruguay. All the new...

This paper surveys overall export growth in Chile and focuses on three case studies of the emergence of successful export activities in Chile: wine, pork and blueberries. Each case study discusses how companies, associations, and governments at various levels have addressed market failures and...

This paper analyzes the political economy of productivity-related policymaking in Chile following a political transaction cost model (Spiller and Tommasi, 2003; Murillo et al. , 2008). The main findings indicate that i) the Chilean policymaking process (PMP) was successful in the 1990s in...

This paper explores the link between Brazil's political institutions and its disappointing productivity and growth in recent decades. Although political institutions provide the president with incentives and the instruments to pursue monetary stability and fiscal discipline they simultaneously...