This book strives to better understand the recent labor market trends in the countries of the region and the factors that underlie the failure of many of those countries to create more, but especially more productive and rewarding jobs. In particular, the book addresses four main questions: how...

This book analyzes recent labor market trends in Latin American countries and the factors that underlie the failure to create more-and more productive and rewarding-jobs, a failure with substantial political and social costs. The authors analyze how growth and job creation in the region's...

This paper argues that welfare programs are linked with the destruction of social capital, as measured by interpersonal trust in laboratory games. The paper employs experimental data for representative samples of individuals in four Latin American capital cities (Bogota, Lima, Montevideo, and...

This paper analyzes the impact of formal property rights on plot use and credit access in 20 communities in Guatemala, and shows how these impacts differ depending on the community conflict context. The paper proposes a new instrument based on detailed information about the geographic location...

Applying the methodology developed in Ñopo (2004), this paper analyzes the evolution of the gender wage gap in Peru from 1986 to 2000. This methodology has two advantages. First, it recognizes that the supports of observable characteristics distributions differ substantially. Second, it...

The paper contains and impact evaluation of matching grants to promote investments in innovation on firm financed R&D and other output variables.

This book presents a new framework for analyzing the political economy of budget processes in Latin America that is based on the following premises: i) the budget process must be considered as part of the overall policymaking process rather than in isolation; ii) budget outcomes cannot be fully...