This paper analyzes the role of the sharply increases in the minimum wage after 2004 in Uruguay in the slight decrease on wage inequality. We Önd no impact of the miminum wage increases on wage inequality. This results can be explained by the low starting level of the minimum wage or lack of...

Analizamos las calificaciones de deuda soberana a partir de modelos logit para una muestra de 53 países entre 2000 y 2010. Dado que la literatura sobre el tema omite un tratamiento diferencial para variables explicativas no estacionarias incorporamos un factor de tendencia que interactúa con...

There is an increasing literature that discusses how to measure the middle class. Some approaches are based on an arbitrary deÖnition such as income quartiles or the poverty line. Recently, Foster and Wolfson developed a methodology which lacks of arbitrariness that enables us to compare the...

In the case of natural monopolies there tends to be a trade-off between a higher quality of output provided by private firms, and a better access for poor consumers provided by public firms. This is partly the reflection of differences in objectives by private and public firms. The former tend...

This study applies the extension of the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition developed by Albrecht, van Vuuren and Vroman (2009) to analyze the gender wage gap with selection correction in Uruguay. The wage gap is increasing in the upper part of the wage distribution suggesting a glass ceiling...

I use disaggregated good prices data for U.S. and Mexican cities for nine categories of consumer prices to estimate the ¡°border effect¡¯ on U.S. - Mexican relative price and find that for all the categories of goods it is an order of magnitude larger than for U.S. - Canadian prices (13.22...

This paper quantifies the distributional and poverty effects of national and external trade reform in Brazil using household survey data. We estimate the consumption and labor impact of the Mercosur trade reform following the methodology suggested by Porto (2006). In order to analyze the impact...

In this study we use data on subjective well being and migration in Cuenca, one of the Ecuador's largest cities. We examine the impact of migration on the happiness of the family left behind. We use the propensity score matching estimator to take into account the endogeneity of migration. Our...

Inflation expectations are key unobservable variables for decision-making, especially in managing monetary policy. Understand how to formulate them, if they are rational or adaptive is vital. This study answers these questions through a panel data analysis of the micro data from the inflation...

The issue of public safety has been under debate in Uruguay and a great part of the public opinion highlights that the situation has worsened. The objective of this study is to verify people’s perception in Uruguay and discuss the responses in comparison with others Latin American countries....