Industrial clusters, which are commonly targeted to receive financial support allocated to locally based development projects, are seen as an effective industrial policy tool for improving productivity and generating employment. Nevertheless, identifying clusters and assessing their economic...

In this paper we aim to disentangle how sectoral economic growth affects the size of the middle class, using state-level data of Bolivia from 2000 to 2017 and breaking the three main economic activities into subsectors to attain more-specific results. Because the data from Bolivia are limited,...

The effects of capital requirements on risk-taking and welfare are studied in a stochastic overlapping generations model of endogenous growth with banking, limited liability, and government guarantees. Capital producers face a choice between a safe technology and a risky (but socially...

In this paper, we characterize the geography of Colombian exporting clusters and analyze how the COVID-19 crisis has affected Colombian exporters. We contribute to the industrial clusters literature by defining exporting clusters with bipartite network analysis and community detection tools. The...

In this paper, we study the role of a cluster initiative in fostering economic resilience among firms in a local technology cluster in Argentina. We focus on two aggregate shocks that hit the Argentine economy, including first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis is based on interviews...

Does the growth of creative industries within a city yield both agglomeration effects (Marshallian externalities) as well as spillovers to the rest of the economy (Jacobian externalities, related to the novel combinations that can occur in cities with diversifted economic activities)? Most of...

This paper finds that per capita municipal spending on public services is strongly and non-linearly correlated to urban population density. Optimal expenditure levels for municipal services are achieved when densities are close to 9,000 residents per square kilometer. In this study of...

Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region in the world, with an annual homicide rate of more than 20 per 100,000 population and with an increasing trend. Yet most evidence of crime concentration, geo-temporal patterns, and event dependence comes from cities in high-income...