En la última década la orientación de las políticas microeconómicas dio un giro extraordinario en América Latina, pero la legislación laboral prácticamente no cambió. El propósito central de este trabajo es mostrar la magnitud de este atraso y señalar que en la mayoría de países se...

This paper presents an evaluation of the impact of structural reforms using data collected for 17 Latin American countries for the period 1970-1996. In line with the literature, the results show that growth was responsive to investment in physical as well as in human capital. Results also...

This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of structural reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the dataset constructed by Alesina and others (2020). We find that large changes in the reform index have positive effects on GDP and employment that reach 2 percent after 5 years....

This paper updates ECLAC's indexes of structural reform in five areas: trade reform, financial liberalization, tax reform, liberalization of external capital transactions and privatization. 17 Latin American countries are covered for the period 1970-2000. The resulting indexes facilitate...

With the global economy gaining some momentum, economies of Latin America and the Caribbean are recovering from a recession at the regional level in 2016. This gradual improvement can be understood as tale of two adjustments, external and fiscal, that are ongoing in response to earlier shocks....

Due to historically low internal saving rates, access to external financing is very important to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), even more so in the context of the 2030 Agenda and the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Public financing falls short of what is...

During the pandemic, public debt in Latin America and the Caribbean rose to more than 70 percent of GDP, and countries are now attempting to lower debt ratios. We analyze past debt reduction episodes and find inflation and the real interest rate were the most frequent main drivers, while higher...

This paper assesses the vulnerability of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) economies to external crises. It shows that while the average LAC economy has made significant strides to reduce vulnerability to crises to its historical minimum, there is still considerable room for improvement,...