The Bank expanded its housing finance activities in the 1990s, shifting its support toward sector reforms that increase the capacity of housing finance and delivery mechanisms to cater to the needs of low-income households. The present publication examines Bank experience in housing, draws...

The search for solutions to urban and social problems prompted by informal settlements is gaining importance in the development agenda of most large cities in Latin America. Nearly 60 percent of the population lives in informal, often centrally located settlements.

La Revista Integración & Comercio del BID incluye artículos referidos a las distintas manifestaciones del proceso de integración en América Latina y el Caribe, a la integración hemisférica y, también, a los procesos con igual orientación que se llevan a cabo en otras partes del mundo....

The cities offer Latin America and the Caribbean their best opportunity for economic and social development. Aside from concentrating on more than two thirds of the population, it is estimated that urban activities will generate more than 75 percent of the expected growth of the Gross Domestic...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of fiscal policy, in particular the accumulation of government debt. The authors examine three possible determinants of fiscal balances: opportunistic behavior by policymakers, heterogeneous fiscal preferences of either voters or...

This paper seeks to identify the most promising fiscal strategy to boost long-term economic growth in Argentina and quantify its effects. To this end, the authors updated a growth-diagnostics study for Argentina and corroborated that low appropriability of social returns and insufficient public...

This book explains how economies, institutions, and politics interact to produce budget outcomes in Latin America, a region in which informality dominates public governance. It includes detailed country analyses which provide comparative knowledge about the workings of policymaking and budget...

Tax policy is among the most common and relevant instruments in the toolkit of policy-makers when thinking about promoting growth, yet there is not compelling evidence regarding its effect in Latin American countries. Using a variety of approaches, we estimate the effects on growth of the most...

The recent financial crisis has initiated pressures for not only policy reform but also fundamental institutional fiscal reforms. This paper explores the connection between economic crises and fiscal institutional reforms in a region that has experienced plenty of both in recent years, namely...

This paper empirically explores the effects of payroll taxes, value-added taxes and corporate income taxes on a variety of labor market outcomes such as employment, unemployment, informality, and wages. Using national-level data on labor variables for 15 Latin American countries, the results...