This paper examines how the combination of indebtedness and exogenous shocks induce volatility for the countries of Latin America. A techique for simulating the impact of shocks on the costs of external indebtedness and the response of fiscal policies in adjustment to such shocks is presented...

The topics covered in the chapters of the report were presented and discussed in a conference organized by the IDB in Port of Spain on July 13th, 2004. After more than a decade of economic growth and despite encouraging prospects for the future, the Trinidad and Tobagp economy remains overly...

Jamaica's fiscal and debt position has long been recognized as a major issue for the country, and the country has made several attempts to resolve this challenge by increasing revenue or reducing expenditures. Despite these adjustments, Jamaica has systematically failed to achieve its budget...

According to an influential theoretical argument, presidential systems tend to present smaller governments because the separation between those who decide the size of the fiscal purse and those who allocate it creates incentives for lower public expenditures. In practice, forms of government...

En este trabajo se analiza el esfuerzo fiscal que realizan los municipios guatemaltecos sobre el recaudo de su principal ingreso tributario, el Impuesto Único Sobre Inmuebles (IUSI). Los resultados del estudio indican que el esfuerzo fiscal municipal es bajo y lejano a su potencial en el caso...

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 del presente documento es hacer un recuento de las políticas de incentivos tributarios existentes en América Latina y el Caribe a la luz de la experiencia internacional. Para esto se presenta una breve discusión de la motivación económica que lleva a la intervención de la...

This paper examines the impact of the availability of fiscal revenues from nonrenewable resources on other revenues of Latin American and Caribbean resource-exporting countries. It compares the performance of nonresource revenues in these countries to that in other countries in the region. The...

Debido a la alta dependencia de las transferencias desde el gobierno federal, tradicionalmente se ha argumentado que existe un bajo esfuerzo fiscal en los estados mexicanos. Esta aproximación es parcial porque una evaluación completa del desempeño fiscal debe estar asociada con su potencial...

In this policy brief, we focus on the debates surrounding what has been called the "silent debt crisis" of the Caribbean. We discuss the level of debt at which the relation with economic growth turns from positive to negative. We also discuss, illustrated with simulations of the tradeoffs, how...