We analyse the important role of education in economic development and social wellbeing of American countries, including indicators of gender opportunities for development as part of social well-being. In this regard we select some indicators which usually have a great importance for reaching...

We analyse the evolution of Manufacturing Value-Added per inhabitant in 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries during the period 1980-2002, and present a comparison with more industrialized countries. We find that very few Latin American countries have experienced an increase in that variable...

Between 2000 and 2013, Latin America has considerably reduced poverty (from 46.3 to 29.7 % of the population). In this paper, we use synthetic panels to show that, despite progress, the region remains characterized by substantial vulnerability that also affects the rising middle class. More...

This paper disaggregates the various sources of rural income growth in Peru between 2004 and 2012 and shows that about 80% of the increase came from rising earnings and only 15% from transfer programs. This increase in rural earnings was not led by agriculture. It was mainly because of a general...

Using SIPRI's new consistent database on military expenditures, the paper examines the economic effects of such spending in the case of the 13 Latin American countries. Employing both linear and nonlinear tests, the nexus between defence spending, economic growth, and investment is investigated...

The economic history of Argentina presents one of the most dramatic examples of divergence in the modern era. What happened and why? This paper reviews the wide range of competing explanations in the literature and argues that, setting aside deeper social and political determinants, the various...

This paper analyzes the causes of corruption in contemporary Bolivia. It argues that, along with the well-documented observation that richer countries tend, on average, to be less corrupt than poorer ones, corruption is directly dependent on FDI inflows, with higher levels of FDI associated with...

This paper analyzes the evolution of Spanish foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America in recent years (from the 1990s through 2012). Additionally, a summary of the primary explanatory factors of FDI evolution in the three countries with the highest indices of Spanish investment (Brazil,...

This paper uses time-series data from nineteen Latin American countries and the U.S. to test for income convergence using two existing definitions of convergence and a new testable definition of ?-convergence. Only Dominican Republic and Paraguay were found to pair-wise converge according to the...

In this paper, we examine the relationship between the domestic credit by banking sector and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in the balanced panel framework of 20 Latin America countries from 1960 to 2010. Panel Cointegration tests of Kao (1999), Maddala and Wu (1999) and Westerlund...