One of the central concerns in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been the reduction of poverty and inequality so prevalent in the continent. Using large world samples, the literature has found that financial development increases economic growth, increases the income of the poor, and...

As is now well documented, aid is given for both political as well as economic reasons. The conventional wisdom is that politically-motivated aid is less effective in promoting developmental objectives. We examine the ex-post performance ratings of World Bank projects and generally find that...

This paper presents a comparative overview of mobility patterns in 14 Latin American countries between 1992 and 2003. Using three alternative econometric techniques on constructed pseudo-panels, the paper provides a set of estimators for the traditional notion of income mobility as well as for...

In 2022, governments around the world committed USD 211 bn. to official development assistance. Despite these high contributions, systematic assessments of the determinants of success - or failure - of development aid projects remain limited, particularly for bilateral development aid. This...

Adopted on September 8 of 2000, the United Nations Millennium Declaration stated as its first goal that countries "...[further] resolve to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world's people whose income is less than one dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from...

This paper examines the impact on TFP in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and in other developing countries (DEV) of trade-related foreign R&D (NRD), education and governance. The measures of NRD are constructed based on industry-specific R&D in the North, North-South trade patterns, and...

Although there is ample support for the causal link between home visit parenting programs and child development outcomes, few studies have explored what it is that drives this relationship – to what extent home visit programs are implemented as designed in terms of the content and strategies...

This paper discusses the transportation challenges that urban areas in Latin America and the Caribbean face and reviews the causal evidence on the impact brought by different urban transport system interventions implemented around the world. The objective is to highlight the main lessons learned...

This paper discusses theoretical and practical issues related to long-term care (LTC) services in Latin America. Demand for these services will rise as the region undergoes a swift demographic transition from its currently young population to a rapidly aging one, especially since the region's...