The material within these pages shows that Barbados, a Caribbean country with just over a quarter of a million people, embodies many of the classic vulnerabilities of an island with a small open economy, yet aspires to developed-country status, and is already well advanced on the road to...

The literature on aid effectiveness has focused more on recipient policies than the determinants of aid allocation yet a consistent result is that political allies obtain more aid from donors than non-allies. This paper shows that aid allocated to political allies is ineffective for growth,...

El objetivo de este trabajo es reseñar distintos marcos teóricos para el análisis de las zonas de procesamiento de exportaciones (ZPE). Como no existe una teoría específica de esta herramienta de promoción de las ventas externas, la literatura registra aplicaciones de enfoques...

This Annual Report contains a brief summary of the economic situation of Latin America and the Caribbean and a review of the Bank's operations in 2005. In addition, the Report contains a description of the Bank's operations - loans, guarantees, financings for small projects and technical...

A common criticism of antipoverty programs is that the high share of administrative (nontransfer) costs substantially reduces their effectiveness. Yet there is surprisingly little rigorous empirical evidence on program costs. This study proposes and implements a replicable methodology for a...

"An Unequal Democracy?: Seeing Latin America through European Eyes" is the result of a conference organized by the International Institute for Governance of Catalonia in November 2003, with support from the government of Catalonia and the Special Office in Europe of the IDB. At the conference, a...