The growth prospects of a nation are stymied by the burden of government debt. This study has two goals: first, it tests whether public debt hinders growth; and, second, it explores whether economic policy ameliorates this effect. A large panel data of countries for 1970-2010 reveal a negative...

The country studies and their background papers included in this book were prepared for the Latin America and the Caribbean section of the "Global Research Project: Explaining Growth" of the Global Development Network (GDN), a research effort conducted in association with the Latin American and...

El principal objetivo de este estudio es determinar en forma empírica los determinantes económicos de los spreads bancarios en Chile. Los factores que determinan los spreads bancarios pueden ser clasificados como factores de carácter microeconómico (que se refieren básicamente a la...

La siguiente nota técnica presenta una revisión del sistema de innovación de Costa Rica con especial énfasis en sus principales fortalezas y debilidades. El objetivo de la misma es contribuir al diálogo de políticas entre el Gobierno de Costa Rica y el Banco Inter- Americano de Desarrollo...

This paper is part of the project "Explaining Economic Growth Performance" launched by the Global Development Network (GDN). The purpose of this project is to explain economic growth performances across seven regions of the world. This paper provides a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of...

La siguiente nota técnica presenta una revisión del sistema de innovación de Costa Rica con especial énfasis en sus principales fortalezas y debilidades. El objetivo de la misma es contribuir al diálogo de políticas entre el Gobierno de Costa Rica y el Banco Inter- Americano de Desarrollo...

This paper is part of the project "Explaining Economic Growth Performance" launched by the Global Development Network (GDN). The purpose of this project is to explain economic growth performances across seven regions of the world. This paper provides a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of...

The economic successes of China and India are viewed with admiration but also with concern because of the effects that the growth of these Asian economies may have on the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. The evidence in 'China's and India's Challenge to Latin America' indicates that...

Workers' remittances have become a major source of financing for developing countries and are especially important in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is at the top of the ranking of remittance receiving regions in the world. While there has been a recent surge in analytical work on the...

Drawing on previously unused objective institutional data, we provide evidence for the causal link between rent-seeking behavior and democracy in Uruguay, a country where both rent-seeking behavior and political shifts have varied widely in the last 80 years, but where ethnolinguistic...