Latin America is volatile--about two to three times as volatile as the industrial economies. It is more volatile than any region other than Africa and the Middle East. Latin America's access to international financial markets is sporadic, and often disappears just when it would be most valuable.

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) América Latina es inestable de dos a tres veces más que las economías industrializadas. Es más inestable que cualquier región distinta de África y el Medio Oriente. El acceso de América Latina a los mercados financieros internacionales es...

Latin America is volatile--about two to three times as volatile as the industrial economies. It is more volatile than any region other than Africa and the Middle East. Latin America`s access to international financial markets is sporadic, and often disappears just when it would be most valuable.

In a world of trade restrictions, large countries enjoy economic benefits, because political boundaries determine the size of the market. Under free trade and global markets even relatively small cultural, linguistic or ethnic groups can benefit from forming small, homogeneous political...

This paper shows that smaller countries have a larger share of public consumption in GDP, and are also more open to trade. These empirical observations are consistent with recent theoretical models explaining country formation and break up, and may account for the observed positive empirical...

In Justice Delayed, leading authorities on law and economics from Latin America and the United States analyze the problems of Latin America's judicial sector and propose strategies for solving them.Abstract: Este libro recoge los trabajos presentados en la Segunda Conferencia sobre Justicia y...

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se presenta información detallada sobre las instituciones presupuestarias de países latinoamericanos. Esas instituciones se clasifican según una escala jerárquica/colegiada, como función de la existencia de factores limitantes de...

This paper examines the process of European political integration. We start with a political-economy model of monetary policy, illustrating a general principle: economic integration requires setting up European institutions endowed with the authority to enact Europe-wide policies. On the other...

We provide new measures of ethnic, linguistic, and religious fractionalization for about 190 countries. These measures are more comprehensive than those previously used in the economics literature and we compare our new variables with those previously used. We also revisit the question of the...

In this paper, we collect detailed information on the budget institutions of Latin American countries. We classify these institutions on a "hierarchical"/"collegial" scale, as a function of the existence of constraints on the deficit, and voting rules. We show that "hierarchical" and transparent...