It has become common wisdom amongst monetary policy professionals that central banks in Latin America should adopt inflation targeting. Pure inflation targeting implicitly assumes a social loss welfare function dependent on only inflation. In this paper using subjective well-being survey data...

This paper uses a randomized controlled experiment in Costa Rica to determine whether IB use by Banco Nacional de Desarrollo`s micro and small enterprise (MSE) clients has an impact on their performance, measured in terms of productivity, increase in sales, and cost reduction. Results from the...

This paper estimates the impact of two productive development programs (PDPs) in Costa Rica: PROPYME and CR Provee. The first seeks to increase the capacity of small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) to innovate, and the second aims to increase backward linkages between Costa Rican SMEs and...

The goal of this paper is to study the link between bank credit (and internal funding) and average firm size in Argentina. Besides the fact that economic growth tends to go hand in hand with larger firm size, the topic is of particular interest because of the severe credit crunch in Argentina in...

This paper evaluates the impact of two public programs, FONTEC and FONDEF, aimed at fostering innovation in Chilean firms. With the cooperation of several public agencies, participants and non-participants in these programs during the period 1995-2000 were identified from a large panel of firms...

In this note, a wide range of innovation indicators are analyzed in order to describe the innovation behavior of manufacturing firms in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region using the recently released Enterprise Surveys 2010. The Enterprise Surveys define innovation rates as the share...

This paper studies the degree to which innovation by Costa Rican manufacturing firms creates or displaces employment, how different innovation strategies affect employment, and how these effects vary by firm size and type of employment demand characteristics (skills and gender). In particular...

This study assesses the direct impact of Internet diffusion on total labor demand, the demand for skilled labor, and the demand for female labor. Using data from a sample of manufacturing firms in Costa Rica from 2006 to 2007, the study finds that both process and product innovations are...

In this note, a wide range of innovation indicators are analyzed in order to describe the innovation behavior of manufacturing firms in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region using the recently released Enterprise Surveys 2010. The Enterprise Surveys define innovation rates as the share...

This paper uses two sources of information and different methodologies to analyze the causal effect of product and process innovation on productivity in the Chilean manufacturing industry during the past decade. In general, the evidence suggests there is not a contemporaneous effect of product...