In this paper we draw a profile of the victims of crime in Latin America. We show that- at least for the case of property crime - the typical victims of crime in Latin America come from rich and middle class households and tend to live in larger cities. We also show that households living in...

This paper develops a simple model to analyze the impact of tenure-based severance payments on firms` hiring and firing decisions. The findings are that under certain conditions, this feature leads to a Last-in First-out firing policy. Also, reforms that increase the slope of the...

Financial turmoil is becoming a fact of life in Latin America. The 1990s have been characterized by enormous volatility in the magnitude and cost of capital flows. The correlation of capital swings across disparate countries suggests that the quality of emerging market policies in addition to...

This paper examines a much overlooked link between credit markets and formalization: since access to bank credit typically requires compliance with tax and employment legislation, firms are more likely to incur such formalization costs once bank credit is more widely available at lower cost. The...