While Latin America accounts for approximately 7 percent of the world economy, easily accessible information on the economies of the region is not always easy to find. The existing literature on Latin American economics usually assumes some previous familiarity with the region and is focused on...

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Preface -- Chapter 1 An Introduction to the Economies of Latin America -- Chapter 2 A Brief Economic History -- Chapter 3 What is “Wrong”: The Usual List of Suspects -- Chapter 4 Argentina and Brazil -- Chapter 5 Chile, Colombia, Peru, and...

"This paper proposes that individuals care about the relative income of proximate reference groups. Making use of self-reported life satisfaction as a proxy for unobservable utility, the relative income of siblings is tested for relevance as a reference point for new sample data from Venezuela....