Drawing on the new institutional economics, the authors examine the impact on businesses of Brazil's relatively complex, nontransparent legal and regulatory institutions and compare their costs with those of Chile's institutions, which are relatively simple. They examine four basic areas where...

Private sector assessments provide information and analysis essential to formulating strategies for alleviating constraints on private sector development. They are meant to contribute both to the Bank's policy dialogue with borrowing governments and to the formulation of country assistance...

Drawing on the new institutional economics, the author's study of Brazil's machine tool industry extends an earlier study of the garment industry in two ways. First, it broadens the original study to a second industry, which could either confirm or amend the original conclusions. Second, it...

Motivated by the increasing use of forward guidance, we consider DSGE models in which the central bank holds the policy rate fixed for an extended period of time. Private agents' beliefs about how long the fixed-rate regime will last in uences current output and in ation. We estimate the...

Motivated by the use of forward guidance, we propose a method to estimate DSGE models in which the central bank holds the policy rate fixed for an extended period. Private agents’ beliefs about how long the fixed-rate regime will last influences, among other observable variables, current...