There has been a steady increase in the occurrence of natural disasters. Yet their effect on economic growth remains unclear, with some studies reporting negative, and others indicating no, or even positive effects. These seemingly contradictory findings can be reconciled by exploring the...

The extent to which local communities benefit from commodity booms has been subject to wide but inconclusive investigations. This paper draws from a new district-level database to investigate the local impact on socioeconomic outcomes of mining activity in Peru, which grew almost twentyfold in...

This paper studies the trends and cycles of informal employment. It first presents a theoretical model where the size of informal employment is determined by the relative costs and benefits of informality and the distribution of workers' skills. In the long run, informal employment varies with...

The objective of this volume is to document the patterns of business regulation across the world and review their impact on aggregate economic performance. The volume adopts a comparative cross-regional perspective, with particular attention to Latin America. The research reported here focuses...

Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean analyzes whether economic reforms have been beneficial to growth in the region. In doing so, it recognizes that growth is driven by a variety of factors - in some cases poor growth is due to insufficient structural reforms (e.g., low trade...

This paper analyzes to what extent, and under what conditions, an increase in household wealth affects the use of child labor in poor households. It develops a simple theoretical model, which uses child labor, training, and schooling to maximize household income over time, subject to resource...

This study illustrates the mechanisms linking national saving and economic growth, with the purpose of understanding the possibilities and limits of a saving-based growth agenda in the context of the Egyptian economy. This is done through a simple theoretical model, calibrated to fit the...

The Structural Determinants of External Vulnerability Norman V. Loayza and Claudio Raddatz This article examines empirically how domestic structural characteristics related to openness and product- and factor-market flexibility influence the impact of terms of trade shocks on aggregate output....

Using an event-study methodology, the article analyzes the aftermath of civil war in a cross-section of countries. It focuses on cases where the end of conflict marks the beginning of relatively lasting peace. The analysis considers 41 countries involved in internal wars over the period...

This paper studies the transmission of business cycle fluctuations for developed (N ) to developing economies (S ) with a two-country, asymmetric, DSGE model with endogenous development of new technologies in N, and sunk costs of exporting and transferring the production of the intermediate...