This paper analyzes the aggregate effects of a revenue neutral fiscal-cumsocial policy reform in a typical developing country that consists of two main changes: (1) the implementation of universal social insurance to replace the current dual social protection system (i.e., a reconfiguration of...

This paper provides a summary of the findings contained in a forthcoming issue of the Latin American Journal of Economics on entrepreneurship in Latin America as a vehicle for upward social mobility, especially for the middle class. The income persistence coefficients estimated with pseudo-panel...

The growth prospects of a nation are stymied by the burden of government debt. This study has two goals: first, it tests whether public debt hinders growth; and, second, it explores whether economic policy ameliorates this effect. A large panel data of countries for 1970–2010 reveal a negative...

The effects of early life circumstances on cognitive skill formation are important for later human capital development, labor market outcomes and well-being. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that the first 1,000 days are the critical window for both cognitive skill formation and physical...

What makes for effective cooperation between government and business in industrial policy? Core research questions on the institutional design of arrangements for business-government interactions focus on three main functions: i) maximizing the benefits of dialogue and information exchange; ii)...

This paper compares the optimal dynamic choices between policies of mitigation and adaptation for three economies: Brazil, Chile and the United States. The focus is on the optimal role of mitigation and adaptation for “environmentally small economies,” i.e., economies that are witnessing an...

Providing unemployment insurance is particularly problematic in countries with high informality because workers can claim unemployment benefits and work in the informal sector at the same time. This paper proposes a method to evaluate alternative schemes to provide insurance for unemployed...

We use a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium search and matching model with salaried employment and informal self-employment to analyze the implications of introducing universal unemployment protection for informal workers through transfers, which are conditional on participation in training...

Thinly traded securities exist in both emerging and well developed markets. However, plausible estimations of market risk measures for portfolios with infrequently traded securities have not been explored in the literature. We propose a methodology to calculate market risk measures based on the...

We estimate the impact of access to information and communication technology on agricultural profitability and child labor among isolated villages in rural Peru. We exploit the timing of an intervention that provided at least one public (satellite) payphone to 6,296 villages that did not...