This study assesses macroeconomic volatility in Costa Rica, based largely on politically weak governments` inability or unwillingness to effect key reforms. Notable problems include volatility-prone fiscal and monetary policy, structurally weak public finances due to large domestic debts and...

Data sets used for evaluations in developing countries do not lend themselves to measuring the impact of training programs on the re-employment dynamics of trainees. An exception is a data set collected for an evaluation conducted in 1994 on participants in a training program targeting the...

The Youth Training Program (YTP) was an important component of Argentina's active labor policy of the 1990s. The program offered courses of three months' duration, divided equally between lectures and practical experience, and targeted young people, most of whom were not employed and had a low...

Over the last few years, the debate on labor market reform has been at the center of economic policy debate in Argentina. This debate has been fueled by the sustained growth in the unemployment rate observed during the decade. One of the major targets of the attack on labor market regulation has...

Recent empirical and theoretical literature on the impact of real exchange rate devaluations on economic performance questions the traditional expansionary effect generated within standard Mundell-Fleming models. Contractionary devaluations may arise when firms face maturity or currency...

This paper considers the main institutional features of the Uruguayan labor market and its recent evolution, with a focus on unemployment. The main policies aimed at protecting workers against unemployment are analyzed. Using administrative data from social security records, the paper studies...

This paper attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of Bolivia's labor market institutions, particularly the Plan Nacional de Empleo de Emergencia (PLANE). It is found that unemployment as conventionally defined may not be the most important problem in Bolivia's labor market, as the non-salaried...

This paper presents evidence on the impact of labor regulations on income inequality using two recently published databases on labor institutions and outcomes (Rama and Artecona, 2002; Botero, Djankov, La Porta, López-de-Silanes and Shleifer, 2003) and different cross-section and panel data...

Economists have examined the impact of labor market regulations on the level of employment. However, there are many reasons to suspect that the impact of regulations differs across types of workers. In this paper we take advantage of the unusually large variance in labor policy in Chile to...