Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and intensity of extremely hot days. We use a panel regression framework at the sub-national (i.e., region) level to identify the effect of extreme heat on economic growth in Latin America accounting for acclimation to the season and to the...

Using a multilevel analysis and the new Harmonized Latin American Innovation Surveys Database (or LAIS database) augmented with indicators from the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Business Owners (SBO) and the World Banks World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS), this paper presents estimates of...

As Latin America and the Caribbean bounce back from a sanitary crisis of historic proportions, the search is on for policies that can accelerate recovery while boosting longterm growth. In a scenario of tight fiscal constraints, trade and integration (T&I) policies seem to fit this description....

There is scant empirical economic research regarding the way that Latin American governments efficiently allocate their spending across different functions to achieve higher growth. While most papers restrict their analysis to the size of government, much less is known about the composition of...

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the regions most exposed and vulnerable to climate-related risks, with large shocks occurring regularly. Climate change is exacerbating the frequency and variability of climate related extremes and increasing slow onset events, threatening social...

Crime levels are a perennial development problem in Latin America and a renewed concern in the United States. At the same time, trust in the police has been falling, and questions abound about citizens' willingness to support government efforts to fight crime. We conduct a survey experiment to...

Massive digitalization advances have made demand response (DR) programs feasible in the residential sector; however, most households in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region do not know about these types of programs. In this report, the authors explore experiments about the willingness of...

This paper examines the effect of women's effective land ownership on female empowerment and household food security in the context of Peruvian family farming. Using an instrumental variable approach, we explore whether self-declared informal ownership of plots provides women with increased...

How does exposure to soap operas with LGBTIQ+ characters affect attitudes toward the LGBTIQ+ community? To answer this question, we construct a novel database of 175 telenovelas (soap operas) with LGBTIQ+ characters airing in 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2002 and 2019....