Since the late 1980s, almost all Latin American countries have undergone a series of far-reaching economic reforms, particularly in the areas of financial and capital account liberalization and trade. This book provides a comparative and analytical framework for assessing the impact of these...

We investigate both theoretically and empirically the relationship between economic expansion and the degree of formalization of the Brazilian labor market in the recent period. Based on search models, we present a theoretical framework that attempts to explain the recent increase in the share...

A common explanation for the poor performance of entrepreneurs in developing economies is their inability to obtain credit to expand their scale of operation. This paper assesses the aggregate impacts of the Cartão BNDES, a credit line targeted at small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Brazil,...

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the increase of Brazilian formal employment growth rate in the last decade. The evidence suggests that this acceleration is due to a reversal in the trend of the average number of employees per establishment. More detailed investigations show evidence...