During the past fifteen years, financial markets in Latin America have experienced a major transformation. This process and its effects on the nature of risks and policy challenges in Latin America were the focus of a May 2007 conference in Mexico City sponsored by the Representative Office for...

This article summarizes a 2007 conference that explored the nature and implications of major transformations in Latin American financial markets, such as the shift from cross-border to domestic financing and the development of domestic bond markets.

During the 1990s, many Latin American countries began to address their problems with recession, inflation, and unemployment through dramatic economic reforms and monetary policy strategies that included exchange rate pegs, monetary aggregate targeting, or inflation targeting. Inflation...

In January 2000 Ecuador adopted the U.S. dollar as legal tender, and El Salvador followed suit in 2001. The two countries officially dollarized under quite different circumstances: Ecuador was suffering an economic and banking crisis, while El Salvador enjoyed economic stability and low...

The growing influx of immigrants into the United States has prompted concerns about potential negative effects on native workers, especially the less skilled. Such concerns have not been borne out by many studies of the effect of immigration on wages. However, the typical theoretical negative...

Following a period of ambitious promarket reforms, Latin American policymakers and the public at large have entered a period of “reform fatigue.” Initial enthusiasm for policies such as liberalized markets and a level field for investors has given way more recently to the view that ambitious...

Human capital is a vital component in the production process, so the size of the labor force can profoundly affect the potential for economic growth. In the United States, the overall labor force participation rate (LFPR)the percent of the population supplying labor to the marketbegan to grow in...

This paper presents a simple methodology for decomposing changes in the aggregate labor force participation rate (LFPR) into demographic group changes in both participation behavior and population shares. Changes in population shares dominated behavioral changes in the historical evolution of...

For policymakers, identifying the factors contributing to changes in labor force participation over time is important for setting appropriate policy regarding the nation’s productivity. Although the factors contributing to such changes over the past six decades have been well documented, more...