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...

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 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 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...

The general objective of the study is to develop a methodology for the preparation of greenhouse-gas abatement curves for the energy demand sector, incorporating the uncertainty associated to the variables involved in estimating the marginal abatement costs. Furthermore, this approach will be...

This paper documents the relationship between regional financial development and firm growth in the Peruvian manufacturing sector. In order to control for mutual causality between credit availability and firm growth, industry differences in financial dependence on external funds are exploited....

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...