The objective of this book is to provide policy recommendations to reduce the economic vulnerability of the poor to adverse shocks and help them cope with income downturns. The authors suggest that, social equity arguments aside, insuring the poor is desirable in terms of economic efficiency....

El Informe de 1997 examina las fuerzas complejas que le han dado forma al proceso de reformas y analiza los retos de mantener un crecimiento económico sostenible, de la prevención de inestabilidad, las mejoras de la distribución del ingreso y la participación en la toma de decisiones...

Competing in the world economy does not automatically boost a nation's productivity and restructure its economy. Such progress requires mobilizing capital, employment, technology and knowledge. Opportunities beyond the business realm must be fully exploited to the benfit of society as a whole....

What determines the capacity of countries to design, approve and implement effective public policies? To address this question, this book builds on the results of case studies of political institutions, policymaking processes, and policy outcomes in eight Latin American countries. The result is...

Regional integration initiatives have long been part of the world economic landscape. In Latin America, integration flourished in the early post-war era but then lost momentum until the 1990s, when there was a new wave of initiatives ranging from free trade areas to customs unions. This Report...

Este volumen contiene los anales de un seminario sobre modernización de las finanzas municipales. En el seminario se discutieron e intercambiaron experiencias sobre las políticas que los gobiernos centrales pueden adoptar para que la descentralización proporcione los beneficios que se le...

Credit supplied by the banking sector is the most important funding source for firms and households in Latin America and the Caribbean. Unfortunately, credit is scarce, costly and volatile. Without deep and stable credit markets, the region will be hard pressed to achieve high and sustainable...

Over the past 30 years, democratic freedoms and competitive electoral processes have taken hold as never before in Latin America. How Democracy Works takes a detailed look, from an institutional perspective, at each of the main actors on the policymaking stage in Latin America, emphasizing the...

This book analyzes the political economy of exchange rate policy in Latin America. It brings together the work of economists and political scientists interested in the interaction of economic and political factors in the development of exchange rate policy.

This report examines the quality of public policies in Latin America and the Caribbean after more than a decade of political and economic reform. A wide variety of examples and case studies are presented in an analytical framework to help explain why policies that work in certain institutional...