We explore the links between trust and a broad range of financial structure and development measures. Our base sample is a cross section of 48 countries and the analysis covers the period 1980-1994. We use a new World Bank data set that provides the most comprehensive coverage of financial...

We provide evidence on the link between infrastructure development and the distribution of income for the period 1960-1995. To do this, we use several proxies such as roads, railways, telecommunications and energy measures. The approach is comprehensive as cross-country and panel methods are...

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...

Using objective institutional historical data we test the link between extent, duration, and transparency in democracies and rent-seeking behavior using time-series and panel data approaches. In this paper we focus on the case of Uruguay, an ethnically homogeneous country. We find three main...

Some key criteria in the optimal currency area literature are that countries should join a currency union if they have closer international trade links and more symmetric business cycles. However, both criteria are endogenous. Frankel and Rose (1998) find that trade intensity increases cycle...

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...

This paper compares non-enforceable and enforceable measures of labor rigidities as a measure of the quality of labor institutions, and tests whether such labor rigidities are conducive to long-run growth. We find that non-enforceable labor regulations do not have a bearing on economic growth,...

Using a large panel of official bilateral loan data for 111 borrowing countries and 78 lending countries between 1980 and 2020, this paper shows that international government borrowing from bilateral sources is acyclical with respect to the economic cycle of the borrower, but procyclical with...

We explore how Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) can help to fill a large infrastructure financing gap in developing countries by indirectly mobilizing resources from other entities. The analysis focuses on more than 6,500 transactions in 2005-2020 to developing and emerging markets from the...

The pandemic hit the Colombian economy as hard as other countries. Using a novel Business Pulse Survey, this paper tests the effect of government support and COVID-19 cases on firms' performance. A one-standard-deviation increase in government support (in periods in which the pandemic's...