Latin America is marked by high and persistent inequality in income, schooling, and land ownership. In such an unequal environment, the powerful are likely to dominate politics and push for policies that protect their privileges rather than foster competition and growth. As a result, changes in...

In rural areas of developing countries, education programs are often implemented through community teachers. While teachers are a crucial part of the education production function, observing their effort remains a challenge for the public sector. This paper tests whether a simple monitoring...

Over 755 million adults worldwide are unable to read and write in any language. Yet the widespread introduction of information and communication technology offers new opportunities to provide standardized distance education to underserved illiterate populations in both developed and developing...

Agriculture can serve as an important engine for economic growth in developing countries, yet yields in these countries have lagged far behind those in developed countries for decades. One potential mechanism for increasing yields is the use of improved agricultural technologies, such as...

Allowing victims of natural disaster to migrate can play a critical role in the recovery of the affected country, but the United States has no system that allows for this type of assistance. Victims of natural disasters do not qualify as refugees under U.S. or international law, and migration...

Between 2000 and 2010, the Gini coefficient declined in 13 of 17 Latin American countries. The decline was statistically significant and robust to changes in the time interval, inequality measures, and data sources. In-depth country studies for Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico suggest two main...

In recent years, and especially in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, a number of emerging-market economies have been reforming their regulatory frameworks to adopt recommendations of the macroprudential approach. This paper discusses the potential usefulness of implementing this...

Together with a handful of countries at the global level, a number of economies in the Andean region stand out by their innovative and rapid advances in the design and implementation of macroprudential financial regulations, that is, regulations that take into account financial risks generated...

This paper assesses the resilience of Paraguay's economic and financial stability to external shocks. To this end, the paper expands on previous work by Rojas-Suarez (2015) and constructs a resilience indicator that has two dimensions: the first refers to the capacity of an economy to withstand...

The depth of and access to financial services provided by banks throughout Latin America are extremely low in spite of its recognized importance for economic activity, employment and poverty alleviation. Low financial depth and access hurts the poor the most and is due to a variety of obstacles...