Are capital inflows associated with faster income growth? There are a large number of empirical studies that identify the most relevant determinants of a country’s growth rate. However, this literature has not explored the growth impact of the various types of capital inflows. The present...

The present level of ODA falls short of the amount needed to finance the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The figure of additional $50 billion per year, roughly the present total of ODA spent by DAC donors, is often quoted (e.g. by the Zedillo Report); it results from the sum of the fight...

The paper develops the view that the perspective on the HIPC initiative is distorted by the fact that -contrary to the Brady deal itself- it lacks all perspective on the “market value” of the debt which is written down. The appropriate “market value” is one that takes account of the risk...

This paper presents development accounting exercises in Latin America using novel databases and methods to investigate the robustness of its results. While total factor productivity initially appears to be the most important driver of output per worker gaps in Latin America and the Caribbean,...

This paper looks at the incidence of fiscal policy on the income distribution for Chile and Mexico. Notably by broadening the income concept to account for in-kind benefits and taxes, this paper provides a full picture of the effect of fiscal policy on reducing income inequality. The contrast...

This paper studies the renegotiations of road concessions in Chile, Colombia and Peru for the period 1993-2010. First, it analyses the legal framework, the institutional design and the types of concessions of these countries and second, it uses a novel data composed of a sample of 61 of the 62...

This paper contributes to literature on the process of reform in Latin America. We study political economy aspects and the policy making process of reforms in what we identify as the five critical steps through the "life cycle" of a policy reform: the Planning, Dialogue, Adoption,...

This paper joins the debate on the size of the middle class in Latin America, analysing its structure and characteristics. The paper investigates inter-class mobility potential and its evolution over time in the case of selected countries. As a result of the estimations, we find that Latin...