This paper analyzes whether Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed between the United States and Latin American countries during the last decade produced higher enforcement of labor regulations. The paper computes before-after estimates of the effect of FTAs on labor inspections and exploits...

This paper analyzes influences on the credit standing of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), specifically the quality, diversification and single name concentration of their portfolios, and on the market practice known as Preferred Creditor Status (PCS), whereby sovereigns that default on...

The main contribution of this paper with respect to previous work is the use of data on subjective perceptions to identify the Latin American middle classes. This paper provides a set of comparisons between objective and subjective definitions of middle-class using data from the 2007 World...

Latin American countries have long exhibited low levels of saving rates when compared to other countries in relatively similar stages of economic development (e.g., Asian economies). Motivated by this fact, this paper examines the time path of the saving rates between 1970 and 2010 in three...

Earnings inequality declined rapidly in Argentina, Brazil and Chile during the 2000s. A reduction in the experience premium is a fundamental driver of declines in upper-tail (90/50) inequality, while a decline in the education premium is the primary determinant of the evolution of lower-tail...

This paper examines the evolution of the cyclicality of real wages and employment in four Latin American economies (Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico) during the period 1980-2010. Wages are highly pro-cyclical during the 1980s and early 1990s, a period characterized by high inflation. As...

This study explores the relationship between demographic factors and saving rates using a panel dataset covering 110 countries between 1963 and 2012. In line with predictions from theory, this paper finds that lower dependency rates and greater longevity increase domestic saving rates. However,...

This paper combines development accounting exercises with economic theory to assess the importance of total factor productivity and the accumulation of factors of production as engines of growth in Latin America. Using the new, drastically revised Penn World Table (PWT) and Barro-Lee datasets,...

Migration is one of the strategies used by populations to adapt to natural shocks and also to respond to economic policies. Climate change will probably have an impact on the productivity of factors and on the health of the population of the Latin America and Caribbean region, triggering...

Information and communication technologies (ICT)--cell phones, computers, Internet--hold great promise but greater access alone cannot bring about economic development. This is a major finding of the IDB`s latest edition of its flagship Development in the Americas series titled Development...