This note looks at so-called Dutch disease, a phenomenon reflecting changes in the structure of production in the wake of a favorable shock (such as a large natural resource discovery, a rise in the international price of an exportable commodity, or the presence of sustained aid or capital...

The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region has seen a decade of remarkable growth and income convergence. Growth has been a key driver for reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. It has been debated how much of this decade of growth has been driven by policy reforms and how much was...

Competition is a core element of economic growth, but empirical evidence on how competition affects productivity is often limited. Competition and Productivity Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean presents new empirical research that shows how competition policy in the region has...

This paper proposes a new framework to model institutions and institutional change. It shows how moral agents, who strive to cooperate with others, can form institutions that facilitate cooperation. The framework makes it possible to model informal as well as formal institutions as games played...

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has made slow but consistent progress addressing the imbalances induced by the pandemic in an international environment that is just now showing signs of stabilizing. Despite favorable macroeconomic management, high interest rates and fiscal imbalances...

This paper examines the impact of two interventions by Colombia's competition authority to enforce competition in the sugar market on firm performance in downstream sectors. Using an exogenous identification strategy, the analysis finds that following the competition authority's intervention...