Using microdata from nationally representative household and labor force surveys, we study the impact and drivers of poverty and inequality in India during the pandemic. We have three main findings. First, India has made significant progress in reducing poverty in recent decades, but the...

Despite its negative effects, the COVID-19 pandemic has also accelerated Latin America's digitalization. The rapid increase in connectivity and digital services was helpful in mitigating the pandemic's negative impact on the labor markets, especially for those with enough flexibility to continue...

In developing economies, a shift to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic varies substantially. An increase in teleworking days per week ranges from 0.7 to 17.6 percentage points across 10 developing countries covered by an online survey to about 500 respondents per country. An...

We construct a high-frequency dataset that combines information on all IMF lending and proxies of monthly economic activity during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-21). Using this novel dataset and standard econometric techniques we find a positive and significant marginal...

This study measures the impact of changing economic conditions in OECD countries on tourist arrivals to countries/destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean. A model of utility maximization across labor, consumption of goods and services at home, and consumption of tourism services across...

Shocks stemming from Brazil - the large neighbor in South America - have historically been a source of concern for policy-makers in other countries of the region. This paper studies the importance of Brazil's influence on its neighboring economies, documenting trade linkages over the last two...

This paper documents developments in mortgage credit and the housing sector in Latin America over the past decade, and compares them with those of other emerging economies. In particular, it examines the real estate and mortgage markets to assess whether (i) growth in mortgage credit is...

An increasing number of countries - including in Latin America - are reforming their financial stability frameworks in the aftermath of the financial crisis, in order to establish a stronger macroprudential policy function. This paper analyzes existing arrangements for financial stability in...

This is the fourth of a series of papers that are being written as part of a larger project to estimate a small quarterly Global Projection Model (GPM). The GPM project is designed to improve the toolkit to which economists have access for studying both own-country and cross-country linkages. In...

This paper considers two empirical questions about tax incentives: (1) are incentives used as tools of tax competition and (2) how effective are incentives in attracting investment? To answer these, we prepared a new dataset of tax incentives in over 40 Latin American, Caribbean and African...