This paper studies Latin American exchange rate regimes since 1960. We model government exchange rate regime choice, constrained by politics. The model implies that the larger the tradable sectors exposed to international competition, the less likely is the maintenance of a fixed exchange rate...

In this paper we collect detailed information on the budget institutions of Latin American countries. We classify these institutions on a "hierarchical"/"collegial" scale, as a function of the existence of constraints on the deficit, and voting rules. We show that "hierarchical" and transparent...

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 considers whether institutional factors, in this instance electoral systems and procedures, affect Latin American countries` fiscal performance as measured by the size of the public sector, fiscal deficits, the size of the public debt, and the degree of procyclality of fiscal policy....

Although the region remains highly centralized, the tendency toward decentralization is quite strong. Not only is a larger portion of the general government budget executed from the subnational government level, the autonomy that these governments have in deciding how much to spend and what to...

This paper examines individual-level support for trade liberalization, relates it to beliefs about trade, and measures its sensitivity to positive and negative framing. The data come from the 2018 Latinobarometro survey of eighteen countries, in which the authors embedded a survey experiment to...