In this paper we investigate the role of financial development, or more widespread access to all sorts of finance, in generating economic growth in four Latin American countries between 1980 and 2007. The results, based on panel time-series data and analysis, confirm the Schumpeterian prediction...

Railways were one of the main engines of the Latin American trade boom before 1914. Railway construction often required financial support from local governments, which depended on their fiscal capacity. But since the main government revenues were trade-related, this generated a two-way feedback...

We test for the populist view of inflation in Latin America between 1970 and 2007. The empirical results - based on the relatively novel panel time-series data and analysis - confirm the theoretical prediction that recently elected governments coming into power after periods of political...

FDI from the European Union (EU) ranks before FDI from North America (NA) in some of the Latin American countries. We investigate the impact of EU- versus NA-FDI on the growth rate including about 50 controls. Country specific effects and parameter heterogeneity are incorporated in our...

We examine the impact of inflation on financial development in Brazil and the data available permit us to cover the period between 1985 and 2002. The results?based initially on time-series and then on panel time-series data and analysis, and robust for different estimators and financial...