This paper assesses the effects of total public debt (external and domestic) on social expenditure worldwide and in Latin America using an unbalanced panel of around 50 countries for the period 1985-2003. The most robust and important finding is that higher debt ratios do reduce social...

This document is an update of an earlier study (Lora, 1997), which argued that the lack of direct measurements of structural policies had stood in the way of adequately evaluating the effects of the reforms on economic growth and other variables. The aim is to describe and measure the advance of...