Structural Reforms in Latin America: What Has Been Reformed and How to Measure It

This document is an update of an earlier study (Lora, 1997), which argued that the lack of direct measurements of structural policies had stood in the way of adequately evaluating the effects of the reforms on economic growth and other variables. The aim is to describe and measure the advance of the structural reforms, using for that purpose a structural policies index that summarizes the status of progress in policies in the trade, financial, tax, privatization, and labor areas. The first part of this document is devoted to describing the most important advances in the various areas of structural policy since the 1980s. The second part of the study presents the methodology for constructing the index and shows its overall evolution in each of the areas over time and by country.