This paper surveys selected themes in the political economy of policymaking in Latin America, with an emphasis on recent research focusing on actual decision and implementation processes, and on the political institutions and state and social actors involved in those processes. In particular,...

The capacity to sustain policies over time and the capacity to adjust policies in the face of changing circumstances are two desirable properties of policymaking systems. The veto player approach has suggested that polities with more veto players will have the capacity to sustain policies at the...

Latin America is widely acknowledged as one of the most unequal regions of the world (Sánchez-Ancochea 2021). But it is also one of the most democratic, certainly as compared to other developing regions. These two facts seem difficult to reconcile. Both folk theories of democratic...

This paper studies the cyclical properties of two key expenditure categories (current and public investment spending) during the different phases of the business cycle (good times and bad times). Anecdotal evidence suggests that policymakers usually cannot resist the temptation of spending more...

What explains significant variation across countries in the use of vote buying instead of campaign promises to secure voter support? This paper explicitly models the tradeoff parties face between engaging in vote buying and making campaign promises, and explores the distributional consequences...

This paper proposes and empirically tests a new demand-side explanation for distortions in public spending composition. Voters prefer spending with certain and immediate benefits when they have low trust in electoral promises and high discount rates. The paper incorporates these characteristics...

This paper surveys selected themes in the political economy of policymaking in Latin America, with an emphasis on recent research focusing on actual decision and implementation processes, and on the political institutions and state and social actors involved in those processes. In particular,...

This paper analyzes the problem of sub-national revenue mobilization in Peru and proposes several policy reforms to improve collection performance while maintaining a sound revenue structure. In particular, the paper analyzes the current revenues of regional and municipal governments and...

The Peruvian economy has exhibited remarkable growth in the past 20 years. Good tax and monetary policies, along with comprehensive structural adjustment, which has attracted substantial foreign investment, are regarded as the pillars of this success. Notwithstanding the advances experienced on...

This paper uses cost accounting to estimate some of the costs associated with criminal activity and violence in Uruguay. Among the costs being considered are those of security and crime prevention; justice; incarceration and rehabilitation of prisoners; stolen goods; health care and loss of life...