Recent theoretical literature has suggested a variety of mechanisms through which poverty may deter growth and become self-perpetuating. A few papers have searched for empirical regularities consistent with those mechanisms such as aggregate non-convexities and convergence clubs. However, a...

Existing empirical evidence indicates that remittances have a positive impact on a good number of development indicators of recipient countries. Yet when flows are too large relative to the size of the recipient economies, as those observed in a number of Latin American countries, they may also...

Workers' remittances have become a major source of income for developing countries. However, little is still known about their impact on poverty and inequality. Using a large cross-country panel dataset, the authors find that remittances in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have...

Using a large cross-country income distribution dataset spanning close to 800 country-year observations from industrial and developing countries, the authors show that the size distribution of per capita income is well approximated empirically by a lognormal density. The 0 hypothesis that per...

Latin America is together with Sub-Saharan Africa the most unequal region of the world. This paper documents recent inequality trends in the Latin American region, going beyond traditional measures of income inequality. The paper also reviews some of the explanations that have been put forward...

The social discount rate measures the rate at which a society would be willing to trade present for future consumption. As such it is one of the most critical inputs needed for cost-benefit analysis. This paper presents estimates of the social discount rates for nine Latin American countries. It...

This paper explores the impact of remittances on poverty, education, and health in 11 Latin American countries using nationally representative household surveys and making an explicit attempt to account for one of the inherent costs associated with migration-the potential income that the migrant...