We develop a theoretical framework for comparing the style of work in public and private enterprises. We incorporate ‘socializing’, as an activity that yields utility for workers and affects a firm’s output, into a simple multitask model of work organization. In contrast with previous...

The economic history of Argentina presents one of the most dramatic examples of divergence in the modern era. What happened and why? This paper reviews the wide range of competing explanations in the literature and argues that, setting aside deeper social and political determinants, the various...

The paper explores the evolution of export diversification patterns along the economic development path. Using a large database with 159 countries over 17 years at the HS6 level of disaggregation (4’998 product lines) we look for action at the “intensive” and “extensive” margins...

This paper investigates the role of structural reforms –privatization, financial reform and trade liberalization– as determinants of FDI inflows based on newly constructed dataset on structural reforms for 19 Latin American and 25 Eastern European countries between 1989 and 2004. Our main...

This Paper assesses the foreign lobbying forces behind the tariff preferences that the United States grants to Latin American countries. The basic framework is one developed by Grossman and Helpman (1994) that is extended to explain the relationship between foreign lobbying and tariff...

Africa and Latin America secured their independence from European colonial rule a century and half apart: most of Latin America after 1820 and most of Africa after 1960. Despite the distance in time and space, they share important similarities. In each case independence was followed by political...

Recent theories on the origins of crises put lending booms at the root of financial collapses. Yet lending booms may be a natural consequence of economic development and fluctuations. So, are lending booms dangerous? In this Paper, we investigate this question empirically using a broad sample of...

An interesting puzzle is that trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s has been associated with a sharp increase in the skill premium in both developed and developing countries. This is in contrast with neoclassical theory, according to which trade should increase the relative return of the...