Uruguay recently confronted the impact of a once-in-a-century severe drought, which affected key agricultural areas, and caused significant direct losses to the agricultural sector, especially for soybean production and cattle farming - important exports in Uruguay's trade matrix. From October...

In emerging markets, unexpected public expenditure reductions increase firm-level investment, which quickly surpasses pre-shock levels after a temporary contraction, owing to a decline in financing costs. Investment’s recovery is facilitated by fiscal space, exchange rate flexibility, and...

This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of structural reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the dataset constructed by Alesina and others (2020). We find that large changes in the reform index have positive effects on GDP and employment that reach 2 percent after 5 years....

This paper explores the macroeconomic impact of social unrest, using a novel index based on news reports. The findings are threefold. First, unrest has an adverse effect on economic activity, with GDP remaining on average 0.2 percentage points below the pre-shock baseline six quarters after a...

We study the response of corporate investment in Emerging Markets to unexpected fiscal shocks. We find that, although firm-level investment decreases on impact following unexpected public expenditure adjustments (classical Keynesian multiplier effect), it quickly rises above pre-shock levels....

This paper explores the macroeconomic impact of social unrest, using a novel index based on news reports. The findings are threefold. First, unrest has an adverse effect on economic activity, with GDP remaining on average 0.2 percentage points below the pre-shock baseline six quarters after a...