Between 2000 and 2013, Latin America has considerably reduced poverty (from 46.3 to 29.7 % of the population). In this paper, we use synthetic panels to show that, despite progress, the region remains characterized by substantial vulnerability that also affects the rising middle class. More...

Using SIPRI's new consistent database on military expenditures, the paper examines the economic effects of such spending in the case of the 13 Latin American countries. Employing both linear and nonlinear tests, the nexus between defence spending, economic growth, and investment is investigated...

The economic history of Argentina presents one of the most dramatic examples of divergence in the modern era. What happened and why? This paper reviews the wide range of competing explanations in the literature and argues that, setting aside deeper social and political determinants, the various...

There is a concern among social scientists and policymakers that the COVID-19 crisis might permanently change the nature of work. We study how labor demand in Mexico has been affected during the pandemic by web scraping job ads from a leading job search website. As in the U.S., the number of...

This paper analyzes the causes of corruption in contemporary Bolivia. It argues that, along with the well-documented observation that richer countries tend, on average, to be less corrupt than poorer ones, corruption is directly dependent on FDI inflows, with higher levels of FDI associated with...

This paper examines the determinants of social spending in Latin America during the period 1990-2012 and how they differed between the years of the Washington Consensus (1990-2000) and the period that followed (2001-2012). Special attention is also paid to the evaluation of convergence towards a...

Global air pollution continues to increase across the world, and Mexico City is one of the most polluted cities in the western hemisphere. This paper considers the tradeoff between wages, housing characteristics, and air quality in the conjoint decision of where a household decides to live and...