Panel data for seven Latin American countries are used to assess the influence of public indebtedness on public investment in infrastructure in the period 1987-2001. Debt increases are associated with higher public infrastructure investment, an effect that is robust to the inclusion of many...

This paper assesses the effects of total public debt (external and domestic) on social expenditure worldwide and in Latin America using an unbalanced panel of around 50 countries for the period 1985-2003. The most robust and important finding is that higher debt ratios do reduce social...

In this paper detailed information on the budget institutions of Latin American countries is collected. These institutions are classified on a hierarchical/collegial scale, as a function of the existence of constraints on the deficit and voting rules

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...

This paper considers whether institutional factors, in this instance electoral systems and procedures, affect Latin American countries` fiscal performance as measured by the size of the public sector, fiscal deficits, the size of the public debt, and the degree of procyclality of fiscal policy....

Natural disasters are an important source of vulnerability in the Caribbean region. Despite being one of the more disaster-prone areas of the world, it has the lowest levels of insurance coverage. This paper examines the vulnerability of Belize's public finance to the occurrence of hurricanes...

Since the mid-1980s Brazil has experienced a period of great macroeconomic instability. Examining the evolution of the primary balance during these years, one identifies three markedly distinct periods: 1985 to 1989, 1990 to 1994, and 1995-96. The average primary surplus increased from 0. 6...

The paper presents a new database on sovereign debt in the Americas, describing the sources used and briefly discussing several methodological issues. The paper also highlights major trends in level and composition of public debt in the Americas, discussing debt dollarization in detail

This paper develops a model of sovereign debt where governments are myopic. Instead of focusing on the incentives to repay, as in most of the theoretical literature on the topic (which assumes implicitly that governments have long-term objectives), I therefore consider that governments always...

This paper analyzes econometrically how a country`s post-crisis debt ratio could be forecast, in the aftermath of a debt crisis, from the previous debt-to-GDP ratio. A critical parameter is simply the debt-to-PPP-GDP ratio, where PPP-GDP is, in current international dollars, the Summers-Heston...