Sudden stops in capital flows are a form of financial whiplash that creates instability and crises in the affected economies. Sudden stops in net capital flows trigger current account reversals as countries that were borrowing on net from the rest of the world before the stop can no longer...

This paper documents an inverse U-shape in the evolution of wage inequality in Latin America since 1995, with a sharp reduction starting in 2002. The Gini coefficient of wages increased from 42 to 44 between 1995 and 2002 and declined to 39 by 2015. Between 2002 and 2015, the 90/10 log hourly...

This paper applies an agnostic structural vector autoregression (SVAR) approach to study the response of four Andean economies (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru) to international shocks. More specifically, we look at the response of gross domestic product, the real exchange rate, fiscal and...

To contribute to the debate about the reorganization of the public-school supply, in this paper we analyze a reform introduced in Colombia in 2001 that merged several independent small schools into a single educational institution, with the same name, administration, educational project and...

Carbon taxes are advocated as efficient fiscal and environmental policies, but they have proven difficult to implement. One reason is that carbon taxes can aggravate poverty by increasing prices of basic goods and services such as food, heating, and commuting. Meanwhile, cash transfer programs...

Carbon taxes are advocated as efficient fiscal and environmental policies, but they have proven difficult to implement. One reason is that carbon taxes can aggravate poverty by increasing prices of basic goods and services such as food, heating, and commuting. Meanwhile, cash transfer programs...

The conventional paradigm about development banks is that these institutions exist to target well-identified market failures. However, market failures are not directly observable and can only be ascertained with a suitable learning process. Hence, the question is how do the policymakers know...

This paper advances understanding of the relationship between tax policy and productivity, taking advantage of unique data from the Dominican Republic to document a significant negative impact of tax regulations on total factor productivity (TFP). It begins by estimating productivity using...

Low salaries, a limited amount of full-time teaching positions, and alternative systems of allocating teaching hours lead teachers to look for additional jobs in other schools. Although this is a more common phenomenon of teacher labor markets in developing countries, teachers who teach specific...

Due to a lack of reliable data collection systems, traffic fatalities and injuries are often under-reported in developing countries. Recent developments in surrogate road safety methods and video analytics tools offer an alternative approach that can be both lower cost and more time efficient...