Economic vulnerability is approached from micro- and macroeconomic perspectives. While the microeconomic perspective is concerned with the impact of shocks on the well-being of individual households, the macroeconomic perspective focuses on the impact of these shocks on economic growth. This...

Latin American countries have always been characterised by relatively high levels of income inequality, even taking into account their degree of economic development. If such 'excess inequality' is combined with the fact that these are mostly middle-income and low-income countries, it can be...

We conduct an extensive robustness analysis of the relationship between trust and growth for a later time period (the 1990s) and with a bigger sample (63 countries) than previous studies. In addition to robustness tests that focus on model uncertainty, we use Least Trimmed Squares, a robust...

The temporal interdependence between saving and output has been in focus in a number of recent empirical studies. Results from these studies have compelled some authors to question the traditional notion of a causal chain where saving leads growth through capital accumulation. This paper...

Cross-country studies have found a negative relationship between income inequality and economic growth. The main problem with the cross-country analyses is the poor quality of the data on income distribution. This paper tests the robustness of the cross-country results to the use of a more...

The use of income distribution indicators in the economics literature has increased considerably in recent years. This work relies on household surveys from 18 LAC countries to take a step back from the use of these indicators, and explore what`s behind the numbers, and what information they...

A highly skilled immigration can be growth enhancing if the positive contribution of the imported brains to the host economy's human capital stock outweighs the immigration-induced adverse effect on educational incentives for natives, or growth depleting if the latter effect dominates.

This article analyzes income redistribution in the inter-ethnic context. The model shows that redistribution in favor of less prosperous ethnic minorities raises fertility among the unskilled minority recipients, lowers fertility among the contributing local skilled, slows human capital...

This paper analyzes the interaction between intergenerational wealth transmission, human capital investments under uninsurable labor income risk, and economic growth in a small open overlapping-generations economy with heterogeneous agents. It demonstrates how the role of the personal income...

We present evidence that an increase in investment as a share of GDP predicts a higher growth rate of output per worker, not only temporarily, but also in the steady state. These results are found using pooled annual data for a large panel of countries, using pooled data for non-overlapping...