This paper provides a synthesis of the four papers on the Latin American and Caribbean economies: Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. It focuses on the following themes: macroeconomic stabilization and fiscal challenges, poverty and inequality, and the use of natural resources...

Declining social and economic inequalities since the late 1990s coincided with several basic shifts in Latin America's political landscape, including an electoral turn to the left and a revival of social mobilization from below. These shifts helped to 'repoliticize' inequality and return...

Argentina experienced a decline in the early years of the 2000s, from 2000 to 2002, in GDP and in most labour market indicators, followed by improvements in nearly all of them, tracing out a U-shaped pattern. The international crisis of 2008 impacted negatively only on the unemployment rate and...