This paper presents an analytical overview of recent contributions to the literature on the policy implications of capital flows in emerging and developing countries, focusing specifically on capital inflows as well as on the links between inflows and subsequent capital-flow reversals. The...

Using a hedonic residential rent model for Brazil's metropolitan areas calibrated with microdata from Brazil's annual household survey, this study estimates that increasing the sense of security in the home by one standard deviation would increase average home values by R$1,513 (US$757), or...

Environmental taxes have been discussed as one of the main mechanisms to deal with environmental problems. Nonetheless, instruments of this type have rarely been implemented, and the adoption of new or higher environmental taxes has faced resistance in some countries. The purpose of this work is...

Using individual data on persons arrested in the Medellin Metropolitan Area, this paper assesses whether the change in punishment at age 18, mandated by law, has a deterrent effect on arrests. No deterrent effect was found on index, violent or property crimes, but a deterrence effect was found...

This paper examines how the adoption of the Australian ballot (AB), and ipso facto, the transition from the nominal to effective secret vote, shaped the nature of party politics in Brazil. Engaging the literature on political clientelism, the impact of the AB on three outcomes is studied: 1) the...

Violence has a striking gender pattern. Men are more likely to be attacked by a stranger, while women experience violence mostly from their partners. This paper estimates the costs of violence against women in terms of intangible outcomes, such as women's reproductive health, labor supply, and...

According to an influential theoretical argument, presidential systems tend to present smaller governments because the separation between those who decide the size of the fiscal purse and those who allocate it creates incentives for lower public expenditures. In practice, forms of government...

The understanding of the economic effect of formal institutional rules has progressed substantially in recent decades. These formal analyses have tended to take for granted that institutional arenas such as Congress are the places where decision-making takes place. That is a good approximation...

Tax evasion is a pervasive problem in many countries. In particular, some developing countries do not collect even half of what they would if taxpayers complied with the written letter of the law. The academic literature has not been oblivious to the need to explain why people pay (or do not...

In addition to the morbidity and mortality concerns of outdoor air pollution, studies have shown that air pollution also generates problems for children`s cognitive performance and human capital formation. High concentrations of pollutants can affect children's learning process by exacerbating...